that year, we scrambled the seasons

so a summer yolk bled gold

into our white winter pages



leaving our islands on a plane

we watched the clouds pull a mottled curtain

between ourselves and our mothers 



in a camper van, we etched lines

into the pale stretch marks of America's belly,

littered mountains with conversation 



we built our own climate with our lover's arms

wound a thread through an atlas
cross-stitched 
with icicles and sandstorms



we entered the new year with sepia forearms

a thousand rivers gushing through our heads

stomachs rounded, full of sun

one year, we will scramble the seasons
so a summer yolk bleeds gold
into our white winter pages

leaving our islands on a plane
we will watch the clouds pull a mottled curtain
between ourselves and our mothers

in a campervan, we will etch lines
into the pale stretch marks of America's belly,
litter mountains with conversation

we will build our own climate with our lover's arms
wind a thread through an atlas cross-stitched
with icicles and sandstorms

we will enter the new year with sepia forearms
a thousand rivers gushing through our heads
stomachs rounded, full of sun

if we run into each other
fast enough perhaps we’d
collide and fuse
like atoms in the sun.

our lips would melt into one
spark heatwaves
to warm planets, keep
them beating, beating, beating

on. our freckles would inherit
the force of their creator,
turn to sun spots and
spit fireworks for new-year

like dragons. a humble human dream,
we'd be stars, we'd be one.

I carved her face from a pumpkin,
spooned out the flesh to a red bowl
traced out the lines where I wanted
her eyes to be.

I retrieved her heart from a pip
unravelled from the lungs of a satsuma
it was sticky, oozed a milky wine
so I wrapped it in tin foil.

In her sockets I placed half-boiled eggs
sliced down the centre
the yolked irises dripped down
orange turgid cheekbones

When she woke up, the walls shuddered.

there, the air is thicker
it hangs full, like the ladies

all the sadness lived in the
capsules of trapped air in
woollen jumpers left behind

men with their toothless
smiles and shining skin
coax laughter from a steel drum

the market boasts a rainbow
of sarongs, papayas, star fruits
offered in jangling song

it was a medicine.
the coral blooms in the reef
are teeth in a dog's mouth,
guarding.

leaning uncomfortably backwards
on the dentist chair
mouth gaping, strange
thick latex fingers
poke borrower weapons inside
and contort my lips into shapes

would it be easier
if we could excavate all the 
decay in a body
with a drill and replace it
with a shining pearl-cap?

start with a bucket of dusted gravel
tip into a cold pan, a wriggling jungle of alphabet
gasps.

drown.
rock the pan of words in arms
agitating the line-breaks

the twisting plait of water
spurts the lightweight
sediment over the edge

to a scrap pool of dog-tailed idioms
the rest charges, a collage of schooled fish
the pulse in the rubble sinks

like a dictionary to the base.
ransack the salt-swamp of dazed stanzas
as a malnourished mole

catch a lump, grasp between digits
it twinkles under caked mud.
free it from parasite-adjectives

strain from the crocodile water
a chiseled torso of words in the rock
all along.