4 enclosed walls of liquid
in a fluid web i want you
the veiled ivy shadows
in a crowded headspace
the saint of dilated seas
met
the princess of abandoned oceans with daughter
on moonrise cheeks of spilt milk
in the lobby of the chelsea hotel

through 40 days and nights of rain they swore
on a bed of clotted blood and see through chinese silk

her black widow memories lit a flickering path
from attic jets
to basement trickles
20 years before
when the saint lost all trace
where did you go that day?
after our butterfly fields
(sarah vaughan and dinah washington and ella fitzgerald
gathered) a crowd
around you
all wondering where you came from
and where were you going
that day
when Jesus rolled back the stone
from a juvenile womb
the populace of a billion worlds
inside a temporary tomb
the shallow points
between childhood legs
don't add up to what God paid Satan
for your devilblack eyes


the princess' daughter
i
dripped from plasma
source such of
inner working lips
the DNA of the cosmos
in my mother's hips
unending lines that never touch
parallel dividers live lives like
my born father of the full eclipse
as i
make mine this pilgrimage
deep to the overlapping ages
undercurrents rest in tidal pools
the shallows smallest stages