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Where I’ll Be Good

Wanting leads to worse than oddity. The bones creak like bamboo in wind, and strain toward a better life outside the body, the life everything has that isn’t human. Feel the chair under you? What does it want? Does lust bend it silly like a rubber crutch? Tell a tree about the silky clasp of…

Returning

She re-enters her life the way a parachutist re-enters the coarser atmosphere of earth, exchanging the sensual shapes of clouds for cloud-shaped trees rushing to meet her, their branches sharp, their soft leaves transitory. She notices smells, the scent of pines piercing the surface of memory— that dark lake submerged in pines in which her…

You Hated Spain

     Spain frightened you. Spain where I felt at home. The blood-raw light, The oiled anchovy faces, the African Black edges to everything, frightened you. Your schooling had somehow omitted Spain. The wrought-iron grille, death and the Arab drum. You did not know the language, your soul was empty Of the signs, and the welding light…

A Dream

In dreams silent secret and unafraid I steal away to find you I’ve divined Your wish to see me I steal away to find You in a forest digging with a spade I touch your shoulder feeling my heart race To think how glad you’ll be but slowly quite Slowly you turn blindly to me…

Lily

Dragonflower. Ice-flame fontanelle plume Of the Virgin — The spine coarsening on upwards The leaves centipede and sinister For swarming up the body For stiffening out the gorged soul Ribs Fish and perfunctory To lift the flared cheekbones, the mouthings Of the hydra-face. Core-abstract Shameless and craving Of cunt-flesh — The splitting grin and the…

Sally

Sally, I was happy with you. Yet a dirty cafeteria in a railway station — In the hour before dawn over a formica table Confetti’ed with cigarette ash and coffee stains — Was all we ever knew of a home together. “Give me a child and let me go”: “Give me a child and let…

Holding A Raccon’s Jaw

Snow melting when I left you, and I took This fragile jaw we’d found in melting snow Two springs before I left, beside a brook Where raccoons washed their hands. And this, I know, Is that raccoon we’d watched for every day. Though at the time her wild human hand Had gestured inexplicably, I say…

A Dove

Snaps its twig-tether — mounts — Free Dream-yanked up into vacuum Wings snickering. Another, in a shatter, hurls dodging away up. They career through tree-mazes Nearly uncontrollable love-weights. And now Temple-dancers, possessed, and steered By solemn powers Through insane stately convulsions. Porpoises Of dove-lust and blood-splendour With arcs And plungings, and spray-slow explosions. Now violently…