route number nine
we traveled your spine
over two lane vertebra
an occasional scoliotic stray

pass farmer hands in fields
on tractors of painted steel
labored maze rows to feed cattle:
chattel

windowed wind in evening's chatter
filtered light, komorebi, back matter
natural at fifty miles an hour
time melting spills of roadside flowers

and press of an orange-red moon
you unwrap its butterscotch rune
full of eons of seeing eyes, candy store watch
its popcorn face staring, tick-tock

then high-beams replace the sun's
intervals of lightning bug reflectors
into dark, deer vision, tunnel turns
and newly oiled ticking blacktop

distant into day's finish, night
journey's last braking bights
in memories gloaming sight
of a rural tale spin write

-cec

Among the hideous shapes
   you are my favoured
For the wretched silence of your scoliotic spine
   flavoured with our crimson wine:
Blood diamonds
   screaming songs of sirens
   writhing on a desiccated island's edge
Boiled alive—
   can be distilled into the language of a pledge
I hereby promise to be yours
Foretell you will be mine

the shrill of deboning the wounds,
the daybreaks those scoliotic stems

cling to, the brine we chug in spring
to keep the tender parts green

now frosted in charcoal,
yeasted-over and gargling with ice.

but this is just winter
swelling

and the lights may have gone
burnt but the dimness gapes so beautifully

at night.