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Poetry
Poems
THE MEADOWS
The slow tension of your step I know
so well, now this absence in air, a tunnel
whose trebled whistle I fall inside
into rivers of lavender burning through
our days as we lie in the meadows, kissing.
God’s feints bruise the rising moon
and come for me as you leave, my cheeks
lonesome and saline now that it’s clear
the sun only eats so much darkness;
darkness, sick of itself, a mendicant
praying for light—I alone enter the cave
of your mouth, I alone coddle
its alien tongue with mine.
AFTER
I held you under open heat
by a river that warmed and curved
in the distance, sloshed beneath trains
in that strange society. Our dawns tapered,
turning gelatinous within the deep grammar
of love. I peppered these quiet words for you, across
the marmalade dusk, and now you stand in a field within
my solitude. There is a God moving her dark hand in water over the straits
where whales go to calve. In shallows they find muster for the new babe.
The grass glitters, daisies quiver in their windy groove as you begin
to remember our time: I couldn’t gather you up, knowing
your nose, your tongue might find another, snug
in the air coiling our concrete past, that now cracks
around the waists of women you think you
finally learnt how to love. Think of me
as a hand in the pines, from a purer
time, as error and ghost still coring
your chest: stubborn,
unmoving.
ZONE
Tornado, in the corner
of the car I held you, held
the unconsoled
chin, as my own. My cool
tongue, here.
Your mouth,
quiet & ear, wet.
—Slide
Segue—
—Zip
How we’re thrown
from love
to love
never touched
the right way.