Look up water.
See what books,
so fearful of the subject,
refuse to stay.
Flowers gasp to stay afloat.
His desires spirit him away.
His desire to finger the piano,
her
with or without her face.
The touch of her mind on the water
regal red.
Life and I do not care who we have.
He is
crunched afterbirth.
The quality predictions
are grainy.
My name used to be July.
My clothes want butterflies.
I was born to rise.
The sky,
jealous,
buried me in his mire.
She needs sour apple vodka mixed with a tart schnapps.
On her way in the nonchalant dark her dignity escaped her.
At the counter a man wonders where fugitive dignity hides.
She leaves holding black bags,
tries not to notice that even with 6 clanging bags of bottles
her load is lighter than it was.
I have 22 pounds of wishes hidden among the weeping wisteria.
The flowers by the pond have been melancholy a long time.
I drink with them.
Look at Lily’s tattoos.
Kind of abstract, don’t you think?
I’ve been told some people are really into that.
But the roses and I share the best laughs because we know it is not about pattern
but all about color and that soft, sweet texture on the fingerpads.
Meanwhile the snapdragons do deep, twisted math at the waters edge
and I drop a wish in the water.
The sweet blue west calls me.
A vision of endless land is seared into my eyes.
Why take this seasick sailor
and set her in the lovelorn Prairie
where emptiness is everything
and loneliness is nothing,
only to drop her from a thunderous cloud
in a crowded coastal city
to drown?
The residue of angels drapes
like fine linen
over our hands
our language
our thighs.
Death and I do not care what time it is.
He is a delinquent
I am night’s dilettante.
A lighthouse is afraid.
The gray sea is a dancer and a whore.
Stop feeding the birds along
the craggy shore your dinner.
They are waiting for you.
He casts his net among the rocks.
Broken jaws chatter beneath the water.
Two towns over he is a baby licking
his mother’s paintings.
Today he is a glass hunter
All shine and no stick.
Recapturing yourself will be easy.
White still in the bedroom,
structure from private, necessary snow.
dreaming of silence.
Your mind is a playground of artillery.
Capturing the sense of yourself will be hard,
Lost 2 feet tall in a field of chaff.
The women have needles and no yarn.
A man sits toward the curdling sun,
his face a mouth.
Sound your siren song
A gentle offering of wisteria wishes
and sulking letters.
Give her a sonorous rope to tie round her wrist
a little balloon bobbing desperately toward mass.
Fuzzy snowmen smell like turpentine.
Why all this wistful wind,
this heavy quiet,
these creative snowmen dancing in slow motion
to no music?
Not inaudible music,
or even illegible sound,
but nothing at all-
Machines with no factory.
This snow covers a ghost city.
The children scattered and died.
Yes, I am freezing.
Would you like to dance?
Church of memoir,
of discovery,
of chants.
Cloistered in my name are ten lives
I did not live
in favor of a sublime 11th.
What is better than best?
What can joy can be discarded for ecstasy?
The taste of salt lines my mouth
when I look back.
translated to Xhosa, Afrikaans, and back
Church of Love
I find joy
while I lay cloistered in my ten lives.
Auroras swirl beyond my reach.
They will not live.
There is a reason I am so inordinately fond of 11.
What is better than a lot?
Why have I ignored peace?
It tasted of salt in my mouth.
Power lines guiding me back home.
Church of Love
Separate the gaiety from the joy.
Lonely in my ten lives,
they live,
it is as though they live without me.
How do I dispose of gaiety?
Of me?
Miniature Moon 