Idling in a wedding gown,
white on white skin reflecting in its paleness
the filth of what has been
and what is to be.
Slips of fabric tease hard lines of shoulder,
a wispy, hyaline veil cascades in reverence
about honeyed curls
and through the curtain, his lashes flutter
a boyish acquiesce.

Fruit trees sprout on the petticoats of the billabong:
desert figs and passionfruit
and currants thick with black flesh
who peel themselves back
to tumble into his wide-open mouth.

Tulle and silk bunch around his knees
soaking in juices from the feast.
Eyelids lower over two blissed out
messy half-moons,
while drool or puke or juice
drivel down his chin
in uneven, marbled strings.

Hyacinths shiver in the breeze
Dark hair framed by creamy peony petals
Sulking against coal curls because the boy is too beautiful
His lips split, trembling in inaudible pleas

ice cube astronauts
in a melting mint galaxy of
gin and floral tonic
orbit the space I’ve carefully reserved
for forgetting

seated in forest grass, in a blue
mossy nest, hot to the touch
despite a lack of sun,
is a faceless statue
a simple granite rock in the breeze,
it’s carved grimace refusing to breathe

Your voice is a honey-lacquered harp string
Plucked with precision and ease and
your two hands turn the pages of my sheet music
my curling parchment cradling notes
whose ink you no longer read, boy,
You’ve whispered these songs for decades
it seems
And still I weep
when sugar meets tongue
and seam

Whatever was that sapling between us
growing steadily without sun?

Did it beg for the sea-washed crook of your arm?
To sit in our garden ‘til dawn?

I searched myself for you
in the promiscuous creek foam
in the still summer pond
and still,
smothered in daylight,
somehow nowhere

Your smile cleaved me in two
and moss soothes the cracks.
Ancient and unyielding and cool.

Dreamt of being awash in arms
that were neither mine nor
belonged to mine
But that slid behind me
as a pulsing, licentious
sea mine

Am I sea glass?

Am I a wishy-washy shellfish
On any masculine sea-floor?

Am I silly ocean foam?

In a spot where my left eye
should see clearly is
a new eye
a new bright pool
reflecting my sleeping and
blinking to teach how algae
roots in still waters

At night while you sleep, I carve out
spoonfuls of gut, and wax and polish and buff
and replace it with stitches so fine
you can't discern the old scars from new.

I'm just a granite slab of a statue
I have moss on my calves and on my back
because I am facing South, towards
the far-off sea;
but even this is wrong.
Break my fingers,
Break my knees inwards
so that I come heavy to the forest floor
scattering into my many earthen pieces,
into my many girlish sighs,
every quiet sadness, every unrequited torment
slipping from my gut
like wet intestines.
Every tucked away breath spilling through my lips
as I lay my face cold to the soil
as I have so many nights to your shoulder.

It was a warm night in Madrid,
when I met her.
She rounded the corner like a siren would the sea,
dripping and demanding
her legs long, level and silk
with hips like two half moons
sauntering in a way
only gypsies know.
Her fingers danced delicate ballets
and from the nail beds
poured boiled sugar, coiling the length of my spine.
Burnt cream in colour
like her body, her demeanor,
dark, wild hair framing darker, wilder eyes
hooded Venus orbs.
Her *** candied meteorites on my lip.

I want to be the stones to your riverbed,
pipeclayed satellites
so that you move forever about my body
and I sturdy along the soft banks of your heart.

And to the softer parts,
to the dunes worn by rushing water and starfish,
sulking and easing their way under your skin,
as they do,
to those submerged shores
I want to knead,
smoothing over every inch of you
until you forget how heavy debris can settle.

Over the cliff of our bed
I am a waterfall.
My backbone curls into rainbows,
my fingers are little pink salmon mating in the spray.
Your shoulder is my shoal
onto which I am unsheathing black-sand claws;
a lazy gull stretching the winter from her wings.

From here, there's a whole sky spread like
blueberries and jam, like
fields of stars and I'm sprinting
across them, east, each a little posy
on the palms of my feet.
or some angel, thighs apart, grape lips,
her shoulders tossed,
wan and against a pool of clouds
babbling nonsense like a child, or
an oil painting of the sun
over Rio, or over Borneo or Milan.
She's lifting my face
eyes not even meeting mine because
they're so far off and lost
soft and lazy
about them the reflection of
turquoise is earth brown.

On the street in Tokyo one summer
a woman seized my shoulders,
her coarse hair as coal as night and hugging her face
so that when she opened her mouth
the darkness and roundness of it all
was as if a black hole were to engulf me entirely.
Good nature and sake
dried in spittle on her lip,
she cupped my *******
and fed me the Universe
thick from her own swollen *****.

I want to be the stones to your riverbed,
pipeclayed satellites,
so that you move forever about my body
and I sturdy along the soft banks of your heart.

Most nights, I'm on tip toes, hands out
plucking away stars and planets and the moon
rounding up whole galaxies in my palms
and throwing the universe at you in armfuls,
blushing,
because I want to give you everything I possibly could give another
until you are full and smiling.
If only to hear you laugh the way you do.
If only to feel your voice, low and honeyed
in "sweetheart"s or "baby"s or "Shayla"s.

All dimples and curls and pigeon toes when sitting,
purple; and gold dangles
light-skinned girl, dark-skinned girl
depending on the translation
hips swivel to the left, ******* that follow
in commanding black bras
and matching lacy *******.
Rolling backwards into handstands for most *******,
else on the loveseat
whipping love back and forth between the swell
beneath the shorts
and beneath the outer layers,
the lip gloss smiles and masquerades
beneath the veins and bone and guts:
there's a naked, quivering heater
switched on all year long
its dainty wiring peeking out,
the head of the cord puckered.

You confess your love like dropping a stone into the ocean.
She swallows it whole and greedy
rolls it about her mouth,
the open waves frill and spray in shudders
bashful, because she needs to taste all she can before it dips
below the surface.
and it dives,
fish or coral on its straight path? it doesn't give a ****
like you
like me, a barking a seagull over our rowboat
in after that stone
desperate after that stone
its slipping between my fingers,
through my hair
always just beyond, just beyond

over my shoulder the moon is a blurred marble
against the dull night of sea

and the farther I chase you,
the further I am from you ,
the quicker I remember I cannot swim.

I'm at the end of the trail, a caboose burning midnight like a poet,
like a nobody
I'm behind Blondie and Blue Eyes and Whiteskinnygirl number one two three
so that I round each corner dead last spinning my charred wheels tough
aching to understand why every other car
will always be golden to you,
to why I'm unimportant
yet you refuse to unhinge these wrists.
From the mountains, from the sea,
from the gravel beneath our tracks, honey,
I can hear you,
groaning my name up my knees,
"Shayla,shayla,shayla,"
a Super C the way you pump steam earthward
as if to make love to the rail I'm making love to for you.

My legs, two stalks of cattail swinging, against the amber yellow sun
are the single stability between us,
thin as a piece of green pastel,
the pestle and the mortar we've taken root in

fragility and so, you've got my hand
three four steps ahead
pulling us into a run my shoulder joint disagrees with
and over it, you're tossing grenades,
indifference which snaps at my feet
boiling the need to catch you.
You are my pond, my soil, my still of day
and still
beneath your palm I am a blossom, a
girlish petal pining in your breeze.

You're making a great circle around my Earth,
my green-blue sphere,
baby, you trickle sweet Carolina gold satelite-honey, daffodil swans snaking
through your orbit
while snatches of caramel pool between my lips.
such a tease
spinning those slender hips a sliver above my atmosphere
so that my fingers just brush the frills
of your skirt.
You push up between Orion and the hilt of his sword
tossing taunt eyes toward my galaxy.
I'm wide, I'm intergalactic,
I've got stars in the back of my throat,
electric and running hot for you.