1:11

one liest, to
weave her meal
three says:

no body saw
and we won't
tell. cochineal

crushed shell
red, diest.

widow. riddle.
the luck
of one tangled
in her silks.

it does
take two.

the starved.

the food.

Daughter of Mayon

I was born where the fire
hardened into the wilding sea. I was born
on graphite, on packed ash, I was born in the quiet

after the brittle mantle split and dribbled its syrup
upward, swollen into stones, hardening into stones
into rich black dirt. I was born where the frond

and palm shone, anointed in the sun's musk
its golden oil streaming, christening my skin in shine.
I was born when the bamboo reed split, the lovers

in its sweet rasp of bore, released, the song
of its twinned note the bamboo cleaved in crescent
stalks, one the call, the other calling after

but no broken dusk or twilit to tell the song from echo
both are song, both are echo. I was born
from the clay of three earths, the darker brick

under dirt, the darker dirt under dirt under three
broods, the third blood, the blood of three
I was born from the shatter of the clay pot, the red

bowl, where the bowl broke, shattering.

The Wanderer

Mine was the page, Irena had her voice
and strings. Mildred her blades.
His mood tonight decided--verse. Something sultry,
rambling, convoluted.
A fractured sestina, a half bottle of warm wine
and my pen stained hands.
What blunder in orbit tumbled constellations
to curse his bastard birth.
Another one cut from her perch, hurtling. Pulling us in
he gathered a worship of moons, polished
mirrors, luminous after him.

When he finds his way to my door, he will
open it with thin fingers
all knuckle, twisting gently, straining
after the hinge sighing open.
I know it will be weed, attar flowering
damply in his oily clothes.
Lupine, my Anubis, his smile knocks me dead.
I will inhale the dark sour cast of his flushed skin.
And taste it. And forgive everything.

We were what crushed so pleasantly in a fist. We were
sodden, spoiled fruit. Bruise to push
a thumb through, ruptured
urgent, dripping sick sugar, puckering
a tongue. No snap of green, those
blonder and less to blame.
We always knew what we were doing.
And we forgave him everything.





_____________________________
First published in Farfelu, Issue 3

Caught

Fatal commands an alp, or asp
or gasp after the door broke wide
to her broke wide, wider, wife.
A mess of greasy machinery
all elbows, all knees, all the sheets
wound to thick rope snaking
long-fingered, long-legged thieves.

Fatal was what I dreamt my kiss. Victim
supine on a sectional, steel-eyed. Arc
of his lower lip hardened under a red slit.
A red wax disc that dribbled out
the corners of his wet leer. Point blank
when I looked up, snake eyes
and the room bloomed black.

Fatal the original intrusion. The first.
Initial. A letter. The letter, a climax of zeroes.
His mesmer code. I was what the words got
done. Adagios. Prodigal. Nymphet demoniac.
My head of sleek onyx snakes.
He was written. Bidden. Bit.
I told: the antidote? Commit to poison.

Kiss

I saw us kissing
with my arms crossed
behind my back
with your arms crossed
behind your back
with my ankles crossed
with your ankles crossed
laced in wide ribbon
lacing our arms behind us
lacing our ankles in x's
plaited, knotted
so we might not
hold

each other even
as we kissed and knocked
collarbones. cuffed
clavicles. folded and furrowed
scapula. vexed our breast
bones--flat palms, or planes--
these two plates, countries
continents. the tectonic
grind, rub, break
wet spindrift

against the other.
it was painful, this skeletal
embrace. it malleted soft
violets all over our
ribboning, but we kept
kissing in this way
lame, bound, loud
bony wooden snakes
pinched
and hinged at each

bend, and swerve
the slip and clatter
of gears, a sick
ecstatic squirm
and

kissing
kissing
lace-bound
braided
ribboned cripples
and we
would not
stop
kissing.

Blue Moon

A kiss by any other, or if I crossed my sevens
like sometimes when I tell you I won't ever, never
meaning to do it again. But I do.

When the tread slid, or the door ajar cracked
the tea cup's lip wider, I cut my tongue
beneath the roof that drums a clay heavy rain
on crimped tin. A vein lit up our sky.

Your gray stare, gone slate. Sharp jaw
slipping its reef—that neck and the violet
my mouth bloomed

on your pulse. Sick flutter of the dog's
seventh and last year, crossing
soft, a cold rattle. The grave kiss.

O sack of bones, you.
O how I wear—so thin—
over your vanishing.

Tenths

The gravel told he's home and I grew slack
undid the shiver, quickly set a match
to what he wrote, and scrubbed my skin hard, clean.
Wiped all evidence. Smoothed the sheets. Blank page.

I left a note in his pocket. He has
not seen it yet. Else he would have called me
upset. It said: Sorry I knifed the frets
on its neck, and cut your song to splinters.
But baby, it just wasn't any good.
No matter. String along another tune.
She'll likely listen better than I do.

The one who couldn't play dealt it better.
Text up close, or closed text, he read me good.
I took it like the sweetest narcissist
all pale sinew, doll pout and performance.
His favorite flavour, red. He knew best
to trick symmetry from a crooked moan.
He enjambed my soft slants. Yes, we rhymed well.
But every level stanza pants its last.
We knew the natural breath stop. And stopped.

One I dreamt, in the incomplete eclipse.
Unmet, only near sleep—this figment came
an apparation, in a wife beater
and stetson, pounding Jack's old typewriter.
I leaned over his page. Read him out loud.

You are the loose tooth I cannot pull out.
And I like this fever better than most.
If we should happen, let us be beneath
dripping peaches, and a violet sky.







__________________________
First published in Wicked Alice