Her wrist was a bridge,
b’tween wiles and wild
her eyes were a dusky door
of her throat, I once wrote, but can’t easily quote
and now I write her no more.
Category: Poetry
Words, the blood of poets. Slick, wet, hot, pouring over the page in a curtain of sultry satin red.
harvest moon
I wore wild;
a key-scraped cloak at shoulders
you, a selkie-gown, woven in strands of gold and honey
my wolf swallowed the moon
and would not sleep
for thirty days
I found you hiding beneath the tree
shaking frost from the leaves
as if spring might slip free
I hid a caramel apple amongst the fallen fruit.
you found poisoned slumber
and I stretched your dreams into a net
for a perfect drop of blood
tonight, I will hang the red moon
and my wolf will finally
sleep again
bruised peach
(I want furtive words.)
rose-tipped and rose-clipped,
prey and pray
into disarray
threatening to make
a hunger of my wolf
instead a wolf of my hunger
bit by the hand
that feeds it
so sharp a blade
to heel; tight grip, gold-linked-chain
here
wrapped across my palm,
a subtlety
not lost on the kinder
edge
(or the marks it leaves behind)
murder
I see the crows in your paintings
(church steeple crowded, fruit-core born)
and I want to collect them all.
I want a shadow of crows, a silent blanket fort of crows like I used to have when I was younger and didn’t yet understand that black is the blend of colors.
(which makes the rook the most colorful bird of all)
Once I have all of the crows, I will weave them into a cape, drape hood over head, crook one arm, and pretend I am the cousin of death (his father’s side), come riding on a palfrey of patched white, whooping and hollering all the way down.
trailing silver buttons all over the road
poetry
is a lapse in memory
the fortunate mistake
between intent and intentions
putting the sin in sincerity
what happens when we lose the light
better a spill, then a slow leak
you can call it hope
or a memory
or even the promise of one more time
I call it: what I had
before I became distracted by the regularities of life
we find mornings
You slipped into silence,
and I listened to rain,
we were in a study and I think
you paused, your breath
was never quite as hesitant
as now.
sleek koala hat
she was sweet
such a mink
of a girl
i’d pet her
curled, upturned like a budding
flower
she stole my hat.
said
‘it looks so much better on me’
but all i heard
was how large my head was
at night
she wrapped around me
like i was bamboo
sunday morning pancakes
I wanted to pet you
like you were something familiar
but your hip sway
and the curved planes of sinuous retreat
that mark the passage of your ecstasy
were too sweet
a distraction
instead
I fell beside you
on the bed
and learned you
the way the birds
learn to sing
and books learn
to be still
intimate without thought
you make me want
Sunday
morning
pancakes.