the sun set
in a quandary
taking with it
a sharp breeze
a beaten cloud
a cup of salt water

knee-deep in sand
i coaxed the leaves
to hang still
as branches
mute
and shrivelled

**

last season
the trees were bare

last season
the snow fell slowly
and covered all my life

i've learned again to speak
she thought
and fell to writing songs

Magnum Opus

It was midday.

She rose from the bath and went to the bed, splitting lacquered hardwood with the nimble, beaded rain that spun from her fingertips.

Flowered wallpaper tore and grew itself anew as he folded her neatly into his arms and watched the puddles form on his clothing.

Cautiously, she put her tongue to his mouth and met the pulse of resistance.

poppies
sowed themselves
among the dahlias

each grim petal
pinned to the shrunken
air with collected precision

a salience of limbs gropes
for an oblique mouth
to unearth the sour
breath of ages

a damning stroke shatters teeth
jerks the lips
into a vast corrosive howl



***
italicized is from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

two candles
burned alone
upon two desks

and carefully they spent
each other's breath

and silently
they circled round
the earth a haze
to fool
the fools
to blind
the blind

to shield them
from the falling night

you drown alone
but i dive in

to sing a spell to march
through waves
to call and call

until you stand before me
with an oar

two candles
burned alone
upon two desks
and carefully
they spent
each other's breath

and one was tall
and one was small

and neither knew
which way to stretch
its arms

talking to you is like
   making love
in a deep well
   scooping fistfulls of oxygen with every word

   spinning into the soft earth
   to carve a path of fire

i want to be
punished
in your
smooth-rock voice

chastised
for coming too soon

Water

She heard only the beating of her heart resonating through the water. It was as if each sound began and ended in her eardrums but its echoes were small persistent streams spilling steadily out.

She listened. She felt a slight indifference that gave way to reluctant warmth.

The small oval of exposed skin left in her face began to shiver, to ebb, and to vanish.