Swallowed

A man and woman walk from room to room for art.
Her books stand on their toes to greet him, open
In his thoughtful palms, spark de Beauvoir, Sartre.

So much room. They fill it, take on the shape
Of ceilings curved edgeless into walls,
The vaulted sloping stair. He stops to frame

Her in his gaze before the yellow earth
And red blaze of a large painting. She slips shy
Into dark eyes, the white gap of words.

A bedroom swallows poems and clothes.
Persona finally flesh, he mines her ragged song.
Trembling verbs are always last to go.

Contrast somersaults and dials wanton,
Plunging through itself the vigor
Of a hungry woman turning a giant swan.

Gods make secret salts on a lost, stone beach
And scry. Pleasure crumples faces into crashing brine,
Slides froth on tides of shapeless poetry.

Sucking every sea-crossed tragedy from the other’s lips,
They swallow the waste of history, and the sweetest
Peacock poison fans iridescent from matched hips.

2013

In The Nervous Breakdown

The Nervous Breakdown recently featured my poem, "Waking into Sleep, Take Your Waking Slow," as well as a self-interview.

The above links are now defunct (as of late 2024), so I’m glad I recently republished the interview here on Wordweeds. You can read it here.

Strange Matter

The song sung in the inch
of ion breath between our lips—
a plasma sea whose waves
are not contained

by small dark cars
or hand-smudged walls,
the widest desert plain.
We do not sink

to lowest places.
Gravity is no master here.
What shape can hold
our spreading body?

Fashion hands
of words and paint
and still our gyres ooze.
Strange outstretched sun,

fine filaments,
these magnet arms
conduct the infinite.
We let it move.

2013

Moiré

Unmoored as you depart, my waves
Whirl out a pulsing mesh, patterned

On your groove, your angled form, hips
A turning beacon for your hands

Wringing me. I eddy and swirl
Sweet for your return. Juiced curves

Your honeyed gaze has wrought draw flies.
One looms and dives on what we’ve caught

With our own bare hands, not hers.
Despite professed noble intent

And invitation’s compliment,
Her quick net was only ever full

Of giant holes the shape of your eyes,
Your mouth my rushing current.

2013