Endless navy sea.
A periscope peaks up,
nothing everywhere,
sinks beneath the rolling surface,
masterfully waiting.
Snow hangs in the air,
Glittering, meaningless.
Above,
a plane eating atmosphere,
into the twilight with no place to land.
I am rowing hopelessly,
thirsty.
By the crystal river named,
“The Jack O’Lanterns Hold Seances at Night,”
a raccoon is nursing her babies,
savage and cute,
piles of gray and black fuzz.
The river does not nourish,
stretches to the bay,
shatters.
Tradition is the province of men,
my womanhood ruminating in the sticky yard
always conjuring something new.
Each day remembers its ancestors,
is fermented and furrowed by them.
But my hands are a seraphim’s gadgets,
my breasts turrets in a house that isn’t mine alone.
A man repeats and repeats,
A warning siren to the beasts of shore and sea.
We will build as we have built,
but will not fight as we have fought.
You are strawberry scented.
I sip your hair,
strawberry soda fizz.
I love you,
but the sugar is killing me
so slowly I enjoy it.
Succulent,
my blood is drawing every mosquito
in an infinity radius.
Great likeness.
The countenance of the red drinkers
so unapologetic.
Performance
of ghost children,
A ballet carefully crafted.
I am unborn, untethered, everywhere the ether is not.
Invisible, I watch.
A ghost watches me,
green glassy-eyed, playful.
They are also frivolously naked,
but it is a very serious matter.
Dance dance dance!
Without me, my sublime body moves.
A breeze
inside dresses
under feathers,
swills bees and spits pollen.
The DNA on my car is shocking.
DNA is yellow,
except for the manic-depressive variety.
Then it is Navy and neon yellow.
The crowned little girl is going to go Maying
in December.
A singular science describes me,
and in describing me captures me,
and in capturing me decimates me.
These legs sex length,
These eyes arms as desperate as cricket croaks,
These eyes aquariums where the wish fish swims.
To contain me is to kill me.
Like a twisted phoenix I rise.
From my ashes,
a rose.
The wars have been incorporated into this paper-
history,
The man with an impenetrable black jacket
stitching the paper,
approves,
and a new sheet is slaughtered by little boys.
Some grow up a mile.
Some grow up.
In the footnotes,
the great wars of citrus end
as a subsidiary at a small level of heart.
Circulatory virus,
change and kill.
This is so much war and it is controversial.
Only mid-minute meals.
Thanks for reading guys. This poem was produced by first writing one poem, then running it back and forth through Google Translate in the Xhosa language of South Africa, and then editing and revising my results.
Gargantuan aloneness challenges loneliness to solitaire
and solitude wins.
Above the pine tree
the outer rim of God’s will.
I am
so jagged,
a roof
peak with
shingles half
torn off,
splinters everywhere.
Catastrophic and
paranoid,
The crickets
chirp asynchronously.
Inside the window
The fly sings a song of
blue buzzing death in the sun.
Miniature Moon 