Dragon flight, and dragon fire
Dragon fight, and dragon desire
Soaring on their wings of flame
They are impossible to tame
Dragons fly in the skies
Shrieking their horrible ear piercing cries
Dragons winging in the air
Make us wish we could be there
Gliding gracefully up above
They live and die, despair and love
Flaming breath upon the tongue
Is passed along down to their young
The souls in which their flames enfold
When breathed upon become dragon gold
Sires of the mating age
Rise up in an awful rage.
Battling the other great males
Searing hot their necks and tails.
They are grateful for every breath
For dragon males fight to the death!

© Crystal Erickson

Last night
I heard the tap and hum
of haddock mating in the deep.
They dive,
it seems, to distant depths
as if the atmospheric weight
could tense
their roe to spasm forth
and in the sport of lowly spawn
they beat
the rattle of a drum
as baritone cicadas might.
In lust,
with rhythms from the flesh,
they thread the needled cloth of night

Choson dynasty,*
you utter from a stub
on the stand's neck,  
your eyes admiring
pimpled spaces or
the bulging curves
of the moon jar.

It is imperfect like
papier-mâché,
the hollow centre
surrounded by
a slumped figure:
two bodies thrown
as lovers, where,

noticing a crease
stretch the belly,
the mating halves
fuse to function
a wholeness like
the moon we make
when we hold hands.