Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Before Prayer

Each night I imagine your hands.
I ignore a November that falls silent on the grass.
Shall I consider? Each night I swallow your darkness,
my chest, a necessity, a firm mattress that hides
your eyes as you crawl through the sheets and up
my spine. This is how we exist.
Each night I set voices to fields that sink
deep into your hands of rosaries, where we are seated
in partnership, where we burn and bone, coaxing
forgotten graves that fall.
They burst into bloom while mouths are still wet
in the soil. Each night I keep vigil beside you
as you rock yourself to sleep.
My wings, your wet pillow. Your tears, my comforter.
Tonight I will pull along the shadows, place
your chest to mine, and somewhere in the distance
a train will sound. The sound will be of riders
returning to loved ones—
it will open our eyes to here and now.
It’s not that we have made history or have turned
a deeper shade of gray. It’s not that we are failing
or clinging to the past. It’s the way the season stares
leafless and white before the churchyard like a trunk
of fleeting memoirs that rattle in the attic before
death—that string of voices,
now frozen in the red of a raven’s throat.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Breaking Benjamin

Before you interpret this, I must divulge to you
all that is clandestine: his voice, a garden
always it exists in neat rows, lexis in the lungful
of forget-me- nots, the intricate identifiers such as skin,
accent– flesh, inevitably imitate events that slowly
pull faces as I pass the mirror.
& I spend seasons sleepless on his face, in the silhouette
of his body long after he’s laid it down. I scatter flowers
in breath - a deeper blue in the cherry, where I draw
his chest to a pause, carry him to the scents, each
so delicately decorated in the softness of rivers that utter
devotion. But his mouth is heavy. Indeed, I am speaking
of the tongue, of the nether sea, the vortex
in its garrote - no exit, a void, a lilac snapped shut.
& I cannot deliver. I lift his snowy lids, release the colors
into the sky, where simplicity permeates the air, & his lips
part affectionate, wet. I kiss his throat to pursue a sole
riposte, feel a constriction that tugs my hand, pulls me
back as the night that hangs nervous in the thickets.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

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