How my disappointments frighten you,
the scalding of hot tea that should be comforting.
Chocolate mint, I’ll tell you this: these are
the virgins I have sacrificed, only to give birth
to two. These are the dreams I have traded
for cold realities. The rain is no longer green
and peaceable. The ocean is a perfect stranger.
Sleep evades me; the pillow is no loving cradle.
I am serenaded nightly by the baby’s wail.
Frozen solid in winter’s cocoon, I long to unfold
my wings. And no matter where I come to stand,
violence permeates every space. There is no escaping
it. It is in the square. It is in the mean people, hard
as glass that does not break, unlike hearts that do.

1

Another space arrives. The newborn cries.
And the destiny determined:
Oven or matchstick.

Descendant of both; inheritor of another:
A machine that dreams itself into being,
Dragging its sleeping subjects after it.

Sustenance of nightmares, the food of what
God is, blood the earth pumps forth.
The plastic legacy is siphoned off,

Its artifacts cheap jewellery:
Enamel glinting white and turquoise.
Flimsy chains that never last,

And yet last forever, the paint flaking off.
So too does the rust on this delicate orchid.
It is an oracle of poisons.


2

The city burns in its incandescence.
The indelible halo
Of a lime-green candelabra

Makes light of midnight. Our slumber is
Punctured by gunshots and the drone of the
Ambulance.

Not a foot but a juggernaut,
Pandora’s box,
Sowing the seeds of your distress.

Fallout marks the potent epoch.
The neon octopus spews it back,
Invisible print on the murderous air.

Where water drinks
No diving bell can bear
The pressure of such fuchsia.

i.

Pink doesn’t play into it, that delicate
petal of perfume & flower stuff.
She abhors it.

Red suits her better.
Red for Fridays & red for Aries.
Red for the blood her dagger could draw.

Her seal of wax is no
rosebud adhered to
fine paper.

Warrior, she escaped its letter.
With Roman candles & Roman sandals,
sword, wand & chariot,

defender of her Eden.
Seashells are her votive gifts, the
stars of her Atlantic.

It is within her reign of Camelot.
At the edge of the Earth,
her kingdom dreams.




ii.

Blue maid
a curious ***** in her armour.
But she wouldn’t flinch

if an army of soldiers came crashing in.
They are hunting the witch.
A woman can never have such power.

It is reserved for the patriarchy
to wield at will.
Up it goes.

They can ***** steeples with it.
They are stoking the fires & sharpening
the axe with it.

But threats of torture
don’t make her beg, plead or recant.
She is guilty of nothing.

Even broken on the Catherine Wheel,
Athena still keeps her
bow & quiver intact.

Be a voice; not an echo*

somebody had written on the wall.

People are in love with echoes,

reverberating off walls of canyons,

in love with the sound

sounding off.

Nothing for me, they decide.

Nothing for the girl, lifting her hand

to caress the branches of trees

hanging overhead.

They want the familiar sounds

of girls

sounding off.

Love has given up.
It was the wrong religion.

And London did not melt into the Thames.
You teetered on the edge of a golden world,

and then fell suddenly—
accused of sortilege, ******, and treason.

And at his pleasure—
or was it mercy?—

Was it for the sake of your seven years,
or perhaps for the little daughter?—

in which flowed the royal blood, spoiled by *** and lineage.
Whatever it was, no matter.

He would spare you the pain
of being burnt at the stake.

Instead, to be executed like royalty—
dispatched by a French swordsman.

The prophecy must have been of little comfort
as your ladies helped prepare you to meet

Death, newly betrothed.
A gown of dark grey damask

floated over a blood-red petticoat.
Your mantle was trimmed with ermine.

Queenly, you stood and addressed those who had come to
watch you. And then you knelt and began to pray, and

quickly and mercifully, the blade
carried out its trajectory.

Go to sleep, my love.
This ambulance is not for us.

Although, I suppose it could be,
following dark impulses.

Its sirens screaming of hell,
tearing pell-mell in a night

not tinged by blood –
no crime committed for want or violence,

only help arrived too late
to save us. It would go silent then,

as we have been silenced,
locked in a terrible tableau.

You, still, curled around my heart,
me having found for us oblivion.

When I was in her shoes,
somewhat,
I could be injured by any word,
anything.
If only they could feel what I feel.

I forget what I felt.
I have only cultivated a hard shell,
as I dole out
negativity.

War paint I always found unnecessary:
Gloss for manicured lipstick commercial princesses
Not of my kind.

And though I walk with shield, I am without armour:
Ramparts mere cheekbones,
Bare skin impressionable as snow.

Boot-print,
The mark I hated. My characters:
Frail tree rings, exposed to the chill night air.

Gold inlay frozen solid.
The fairly bound dream factory
Lies purple with melancholy.



It’s the world’s bruise. It colours sudden,
Shadowing the other side of the room
Where it paused, rare moth

Lighted upon my dark reflection,
A Mona Lisa dressed in black
And reminiscent of bobby sox.

Beauty without fanfare.
Stuff of woods: we do not glitter.
We don’t call out.

Our tongues are both dumbstruck bells.
Shy rabbits, we fold within ourselves
And sequester our secret pulp.

Your moth light is supposed to
sustain me.

I am told to discredit
my sun,

its fuel unnecessary,
yours enough.

What do shadows live on,
this light?

I am the keeper of your
caterpillar dreams.

Even the stars are doing yoga.
Nothing has always done it,
bending into space.
This evening found me stoking
the fire,
warming by breath alone.
People are such cold little stoves.

Above the sound,
**** and give of ocean,
I heard Ariel sing.

Not quite a hurricane
but a wind that still blows,
holding love aloft.
I prefer to be behind the scenes
like god,
observing the audience
through a ***** in the curtain.

I am prophecy self-fulfilled,
but I’ve been before mistaken.

Surprised to learn
that they embrace what they ****.

I created the tools.

I carved the stone and strung the bow.

I tracked the animal’s prints

across fresh snow.

I took careful aim,

steady, steady,

and then let go.

I brought you meat,

the liver & the heart,

and yet you

feast on

crumbs.

I become gluttonous
on solitude,

the way a person luxuriates
in furs and silk,

Italian leather,
diamond rings.

The finer things.

What can possibly be finer
than silence?

History forgets violence, cold-
blooded, the extinguishment,
and if not, the raw,
steadied torture.

This tenderness
rose from a river of blood.
Flowers in the garden,
wafting for no particular reason,
except a calling for bees.

Beauty I pick up on,
beauty like a sunset in the field,
blooming poppies,
just another revolution,
a day on Earth.

What are these bodies, these
limbs, giving up their sap
and heat? Who decides
who dies, who lives?

What is cut down is
cut down, and
bereft children
grow in their place.

No suits are filed
because the lines were blurred.
**** isn’t ****
when there isn’t a clear no.
**** isn’t ****
when you just lie there
and take it.

Night lowers its curtain of silence,
my only time to steal away, and
**** the flavour out of every
lovely rind.

It is its lime
bitterness,
mine to enjoy.
If only I could taste it.

Sometimes I am more

thorn than flower


*but a rose is a rose is a rose

You are beautiful and I am not.
We are the habits of our forefathers.

We can choose to forget them, let them
Drain away like sand through glass,

Distant dust of history. As much as we try
To remember, desire is stronger than memory.

Sometimes I turn to sculpt soft clay,
Loose and stark in my hands.

And then I abandon the mess. I should keep
My fingertips stained red for effort.

I remember dreaming a vision:
Heroine of my own story,

Walking the grey beach in winter,
Projected far into the future when I might realize it.

Clay does not sculpt itself.
Prayers go unanswered. Here

I dwell in my own lit house,
Multiple yellow lights

Floating in the dark, mirror for
The starry night that I might see.  

We’re the only species with
Wings on our feet. We’ve molded

Paper into something precious.
Currency of kings. Gold origami.

Honeyed words remain my nectar.
Rome is a daylong process that is for ever.

To shape is a practice
Known by time and being,

That I may become a living embodiment.
That I might find grace in a raised arm, a bent leg.

That I might see myself through a filter of love.
That I might remember there are no

Comparisons.
That we are beautiful for our very selves.

The honey in the lion sounds like a delicious thing––
a gentle balm capable of subduing
the cruellest of monsters.

According to the stars and tattooed,
you fancied yourself king of the jungle––
lazy in hot African afternoons.

Golden and tawn with sleepy sun-gold eyes,
shaggy mane, muzzle red with
the blood of a gazelle.

Did you think me such easy prey?
Or was I so much fermented honey,
only a sweet intoxicant.

Sun warmth seeps from jungles of cold concrete.
I mistook your gargoyle wings
for those of a guardian angel’s.

I overlooked your rough skin, your
crooked hawk nose and your skinny ribs,
and assigned fine things in you that didn’t exist.

So duped, I acquiesced to your slimy kiss.
Your mouth a neglected cemetery,
teeth a row of mossy tombstones.

Vampire. Incubus. Your seduction like grotesque death.
You named me tempest in a teacup,
but I was the eye of the storm.

Until the night the eye was eradicated,
and the storm blew in,
striking me dumb with your sound and fury.

But no spattered blood and no spreading bruise
to be found in the pattern of the kaleidoscope.
No cause for alarm.

Today I am lost in a picture show,
a beautiful world coloured by nostalgic past.
Women’s lips the vivid red print of a velvet valentine.

Head in the Clouds, I fantasize about a certain scene.
Because you think violence is ****––
retaliation – ******* in my dream.

Give me an eye for my eye,
for all the eyes you plucked, from women and breadwinners.
Give me blood running down your back, sweet as honey.

The sting of raindrops,
a thirst for outdoors.
Dusk, and the
whisper of leaves,
a certain silence. The evening hangs
still. I want to observe the
moment of change,
the discovery of strength,
a joining.

We have the look of another place.
The rain forest dries to deepest desert
where meat is on special.

Politeness grips my hand
in a firm shake.

I imagine her night –
her winter, her dark – better
defined your light,
the same way black velvet
offers a showy diamond.

A diamond,
your diamond,
full of beans,
along with mine,
full of shrieks,

seeds we’ve germinated.
Yours is tall and yellow;
mine blue and pensive.
Kindred, we
dream a garden for them.

Would you leave me lost?
I could use the stars as guides,
and yet I could find
my way
so much better
by the light of the moon.

Would you leave me breadcrumbs?
I hope the birds
would not have picked them clean.
There might be branches broken
through a rough pathway of trees
that I could follow
in hopes of tracking you.

O, but darling,
the darkness is absolute.

A lot of people think
it's shining armour that keeps them strong.

For me, it’s what’s underneath,
the bones of the matter
beneath the skin kite.

Let the wind take me and
watch how high I can fly.