The syllables of my name
Unmoved
By song or siege.
A liaison of compliance
I sleep on my knees.
Newborn only
After stars have died
Trickster. Strip tease.
The braided hair
Of women I loathe.
I am the race of Cain.
The smirk in me, the simper.
An artifact of what whim?
I have only ever cried
For myself.
Help me. I am glacier
Mouth and crater.

No one knows where I am
And I am as melt and laugh and purr
And smoke and cherry in the old Port.
What use do I have for them now,
Those haphazard things.
I press my breast against the rail
And **** the white scented
Flesh, spit the seed into the sea
Here right where the boats
Come in. No one knows where I am
And can in my hand
And a freeze of freedom as
I scale the mast and plant
My flag, the crown of a fir
My bed. A shrine, graffito
From inside my mind
Penny-closed eyes and I am
The hymn, the itch and the soil.

I shrieked into this world
With a thousand teeth.
A plunder of gardenia,
Gripe water. How night threads
The throats of felons. Whispers spectre
Into their airs. No longer slowness 
Of summer. This — 
The exactness of blades.
I suffer you as gladly as palm fruit.

My persistent body, sea
Ice and glaciers, switching
Cells. Our inkblots, mirrors
The dark art of inheritance.
How I rose and rock, and
A freeze of feeling.
I have survived the moon.
And the sublimation of mothers.

I’m sorry for speaking ill
Of the living. I’m sorry for leaving
The door wide open
While the children slept.
I’m sorry I ran to the lighthouse
Where every painting pointed
I’m sorry for whispering
Descending numbers into a rose bush
(I had to prove I was real)

I’m sorry, barefoot
With the dogs
And the wild boar.
Barely perching.
(I knew then, something held me)
And that time
In the room
With the ***** wallpaper. How
The world ended right there
(Behind my eyes).

So you take it.
This with no name
This with the prowl in its eyes.
Am I your ram? Your grand offering?
I carry a hell
Behind each eyelid
And a deep knowing
I refuse to name.

You remind them of condensation
Barely there and too heavy.
Of long corridors with endless doors
Each marked ‘Hazard’
When you enter a room
The weight of the world
Shifts on its feet
You are magnificent with tenderness
Raw as wire on teeth
You black magic hollycock
Towering in impoverished
Earth. Sprawl out your sorrows
Take every last swallow of sunlight.

You were so full of world
And whirl and maybe
I could see submerged cities —
Moonlight refracted off your bones
Places you’ve never been.
Your sighs to dance like they did.
All feathers. All sequins.
Your ballroom of tomorrows

You have been on your feet for years
Swaying to the rhythms
Of your thankless children
Bowing to the sickly.
No whisk or wing
The midday sun
On your peony skin.

When wine soaked serenades
Were decadence
And our confessions
Were music itself
You threw your handkerchief
Into the gas fire.

The extravagance
Of Ice cream.
Of taking both flavours
In your mouth.

What can I tell you
That won’t **** us both?

It’s your turn to waltz now, my lamb
What else do the dead wish for?

I remember something similar to nests
The sounds of things repeating
In various places. Chandeliers
Too removed to be actual.
My innermost thoughts the lightest
Of all known elements, I remember,
My hollow-cheeked voice reciting
From memory. I remember our temples.
How they will never fluoresce
With that immense white light.
There is a slice of summer in my chest
Where there is a tree just for reading
And greens and greens and greens.

Locks of your hair like ghost orchids
Rare — How they grow in the dark

Like you grew. And what if my voice takes
11 years to flower? What if our meeting

Is like a milk carton decomposing? Or like
The the longest migration? My sharp

Piercing lung. Are you long gone?
One day I will be soft as the insides

Of your arms, where I would lay, like
A milk drunk babe, wishing on moles like stars.

Exile was a haunting in the earliest mud,
A bellow of night jasmine on a wreckage

Of returns. We came from the kiln cool
To the touch. Now our faults blight our faces,

Like summers, like salt-hay. I will not tell you
Which ways your many voices moved me.

I will not tell you the summits I scaled
Now that I speak your tongue.

While the animals tremble,
                               stay with me.

I’ve heard them speak of this day

As I lay on lily-pads the colour of Eden.

Don’t put on that cloak.
                                    It’s not yet time.

First, I’ll bring you three-halves pear and pomelo.

We’ll watch the grenadine smoke blow
                                                    Across the pewter skies.

Don’t let’s sleep and think we dreamt this.

Stay with me and watch it burn
                                                     Let our pupils dilate.
Our hearts will save us
                              My heart.

Forgive me. There are things beyond quantities, things
I feel in the flush of my face. A rhythm to my breath.
An arrest of senses traipsing here and there.
A ragbag of memories, superstitions
Behind lips and lids, other shutterings
And listen! — We are fragile with smaller things.
Pomegranates, plucked loose. Our seeds
Scattered with a tap. Existence, broody
Disrobed of its leathery skin,
We bleed through the impossible pulp to speak
Salvation: Brand new with tags.

Glittering with a thesaurus
Of allergies. I wear my morning jacket
Like a shroud. On the riverbanks
I sense graveyards and cities
They are hunter. Despite the birdsong
And my fear gleams on my earlobes
Like surrender.

The first, unlike any living flower
Arranged in layered whorls of three
And world is music, mirrors, malaise.

We wander, naked In our clothes
They press up against us, we stiffen
Our devil hearts beat faster and faster.

We wish ourselves into the graves of strangers
We talk to animals, a retort of earthquakes
Thunder, smoke for forty days.

Do they know? Our flesh and bones testify
To each sinking of the earth
An atom of faith, the eye of a needle.

I am only nine. And a child's tongue
Must be good. And I should not be at the mercy
Of the fourth sky. Or this man.
Or that.

Not of the mother's milk sweetened
With orange blossom. Not of
Cardamom stuck in childhood's grimace. Not of
The slippery rocks of the cliffs. Not of
Redemption or searching. Not of pilgrimage.
Not finding him young on the pier. Define 'them'.
Tell them a story they already know. Don't
Tell them of forgiveness. Of the dimming onyx
Of the eyes. How I pictured him, before
I was I. Feral and fearless, controlling
The tenuous mountain clouds. The tides.
Don't mention that, they cheat him now,
The days. Don't tell them, but I am there, behind him,
Gathering the papery petals that line our way.
Home? Did we ever posses the gardenia?
The shells? The songs we sang
Behind a million veils? We laughed.
Our eyes held centuries.
These were seasons of many tempers.
Get into the weeds with me.
I'll show you that I am telling a mercy.