Intent is always blotted
by leaking speech:

words stray from their purpose
like star-bellied clouds

that stumble and fall
into a coffee cup,

burning with morning:
a wet mirror face.

The gutters murmur
with yellow leaf heads,

a branch escapes
from the wood (unwillingly?)

& the morning vaults
over the white creek.

I'm here, I'm here,
the rain is saying -

it stalks me home
after the concert.

Dad died not far from here.
Now the evening lays a red carpet

of old leaves for me, a wet welcome,
stamped all down the walk.

I think about Dad, and also Her,
the one who slipped her thin words

into the spaces I was saving
for children, or something.

Those words erased me.
Dad's death erased me.

I was rebuilt in a new image,
scrubbed out with the side of Her hand.

So now what? I grew my hair out,
trying for a new look. I am running,

reshaping the whisky fat.
I am a scream. I am a scream,

piercing the black hood of night,
washed away by this new one.

The new one is no answer,
she's been burned the same way.

I visit my oldest friends, boys I knew
in the lunch line, the school yard:

they are full of ancient pain,
cooked into them, no escape.

I'm near the hospital where Dad passed
into the air. Who knows where we go?

The forest closes in. The sky dies.
Houses collapse into bone and mortar.

I am alone tonight, can't you tell?
Where are they all? Where are they all?

Wild and kind, sweet-eyed,
you opened the drawer

& chose the long knife,
the anesthetic. Your hand,

it's so steady in the slicing,
unbothered by the steaming rib

or the hot pulp heart.
You've done this before,

you don't even leave a scar:
so careful, so careful.

Though you could if you wanted.
Yes, that's an invitation,

if you weren't sure:
cut this deep milk skin

& find my ruinous ache,
exchange it for your name.

Your smile is sharp enough,
your fingers are experienced.

You in that paper dress...
Ah - it's too late -

the theater is going dark.
The elms are sick with shadow.

The thigh of sleep
is whispering to you:

Go now, little surgeon:
you're done this delving.

Hundreds of yesterdays erupt like starlings
from the papered heads of trees.

Pumpkin flesh scent on fingertips:
another happy hour come and gone,

flashing lips that meet and fold,
eyes like inverted tusks.

So I seep over the tile like wine
combed to froth by headstone teeth.

They all have hidden hearts
that swim in the lacking pool.

They all clench you close
& breathe your air,

trying to dig up the root
for their private pestles.

No - no! Never that.
I walk the night wood,

where hundreds of yesterdays
roost out of touch.

Our garden was spirals of green - Squeeze-through bean tunnels rigged with bee stings, skinny mud paths that grazed knees and bloodied hand-heels when it rained. The field was neat rows of gold - Wide tracks made-good with stone, sipped dry by birch and tall oak. Peacocks and emperors flickered, fritillary swooned to a stop on damp skin - Ragged commas were caught breaths in bramble and …I listened... to Old-Man-Brown - snoring and mythical, to the click-click of chopped veg, to kids playing, to men coming home.

I ran, scrambled the bank, grabbed hold of chain-link, crashed into the garden. I knelt by the pen, let dogs lick my hands, gave armfuls of long grass to rabbits. I danced between chickens, beeped back at quails and avoided wry-smiley ferrets. I made it back before Mum needed to yell, shouted out, swirled my limbs clean from the barrel - Excited because, in a couple of weeks it’d be teeming with coppery fish and I’d give them ant-eggs and worms. I shoved open the door, brushed past dead things. That’s what we did: Fed them until it was time.

L-,

It's a lonely acid evening,
citric-salted, hung like a skin

on headlights that rise
& split into orange antlers.

A woman screams "Barry!"
into the alley, over and over,

until night climbs over her
with black, grinding knees.

Sweet Saturday carvings
are Sunday's rack and bone:

after your lobby debut
(your eyes fine as sea-thread)

you spun away, you are still spinning.
The heart's ever-after is knotted:

I thin you with gin, smear
that clever flash of teeth and lip

into the cold hollows of air
that clot the mid-month.

Listen: the alley woman
gave up on Barry.

Yours,
E-