OVAS IN THE HUM
You, apiary, brimming
with the fuzz-buzz
of yellow, the skeins
of swelter, womb
of churn and thrum.
Gossip in caverns shaped by appetite
secret strings
wound in golden
coils, cymbals
shined and tipping
like glass
clocks
toward windows, machines.
Unlocked boxes
all shuttered with false
calm and them bloomed –
winter skins written over
with summer glyphs,
carapace textics.
Hived coven beyond the bear.
Red wound
of the eye within
the amber ovens
loosened for noise
sappy hollows
bared without
pining.
Swollen
vowels neither
well nor
vessel
but one thousand wheels, spinning.
IMMACULATE SLUTS
Thin as a match, the thing you wished for
perched in a tree and tuning. It was a wing
sliding silver-finned between the lining
of the world you imagined turned in, yourself
at the center glinting as the belly of a fish
slit open, eye of the sea split and spilled
like a bowl of black glitter, sand in the glass
still singing. The smooth heat you've exerted
could hardly scratch all her surfaces -- the clean
mirror you've licked. Invented by her, you're made
pink and windy. That's you breathing
in the corner, centerfold of insolence, unzipping
your double, the tree springing silver-leafed
from your lips, shivering with answer.
ELEGY FOR A SLEEPWALKER
I mourned
the death of my half-
sister long before
she was born. This
began when I discovered
a rabbit’s frail bones
in a bed of pine straw.
I began to bury stones
beneath the fringed gaze
of the perennials —
gladiolas and asters.
Her breathing
I discerned
in a bowl of milk.
I chose clothes
that would be hers
when I outgrew them.
For months
I drew her inside a belly —
I drew her —
an outline— a body
beneath fallen petals.
SONG FOR THE UNBORN BROTHER
I pull leaves
from his hair as we
approach a creek's edge.
He is wearing
white. He is so thin
you could shine
a flashlight
through him.
My impulse is to rinse
him in the water, to lift
him out like a clean
shirt and stretch him
over a bright rock.
Like milk, light curls
through the water's folds.
He wants to know
how it feels to be
water.
We nudge each
other in the breeze.
Feathery seeds, loosened
from the poplar,
drift out.
FLINTHEART, PLANCHETTE
Dirty dove, I loved you even
when you ate the heart
of a deer — sliver of dark
meat quivering on your tongue-tip, heart-
ache wrought from the tip
of your knife. The most tender flesh.
That which you taste
only just after it dies. Barely dead
it bled to death still beating
in your hands. Beheld:
the doe and her fawn, the black
hooves knocking the blue glass
of the ice, the thicket
lined with the fur
of a hare, the circle of chalk
where she stood just before
she fell. Arrowhead — heart-shaped
bird — feathers flared
at your tail — that which guides
you. One heart always seeking
a place to dive — always seeking
another with its same beat.
For a moment we moved
in the same breast —
tongue-tooth to tongue-heart —
heart mouth to mouth
with all our jagged red teeth.
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