"It's raining in my skull,"
says the woman who creases
matter-of-factly into sunned chop
of stone beside me on a city corner;
her eyes topple and drop into
her sullied mauvish oval bag
which spills crowds of rag and bone
into her floral fields of lap.
Then: a sudden psithurism
fences us in elm tilt, we sag
into the listen; what strange words
these foredoomed leaf-curls brush
into prose, sericeous speech
that smuggles death lessons
through the ring of afternoon.
It shakes us both: a mouthful
of extermination addressed
to us in the language of night places.
An empire of silence is reinstated
for a lonely tyrant minute until
the bus arrives; she gathers
her handfuls of sparks and solemns,
steps up into the air, and is gone.
Alone, I rescind every mercy I was ever given.
Sep 11, 2025
Sep 11, 2025 at 11:07 PM UTC
"It's raining in my skull,"
says the woman who creases
matter-of-factly into sunned chop
of stone beside me on a city corner;
her eyes topple and drop into
her sullied mauvish oval bag
which spills crowds of rag and bone
into her floral fields of lap.
Then: a sudden psithurism
fences us in elm tilt, we sag
into the listen; what strange words
these foredoomed leaf-curls brush
into prose, sericeous speech
that smuggles death lessons
through the ring of afternoon.
It shakes us both: a mouthful
of extermination addressed
to us in the language of night places.
An empire of silence is reinstated
for a lonely tyrant minute until
the bus arrives; she gathers
her handfuls of sparks and solemns,
steps up into the air, and is gone.
Alone, I rescind every mercy I was ever given.
Psithurism: the sound of wind rustling through trees
