Sunday, August 30, 2009

To Applause

“for someone in love with words,
it amazes me how fast you can move
to be free of them” ~James

Having been accused
in the past of lying,
she is mute.
Now, she repeats
certain movements all day,
etching each moment into
the musculature of her
body as proof.

He admires her form.
He writes to her of it, in angular words.
She places the softly crumpled sheets
of paper over her body
and strikes a match.

In each moment she still feels
the hundreds of fingertips
which have explored her histories,
only to become them.

He asks her questions
of corruption
and tenderness.
There are no answers.

He will come to understand
dissolution as she traces
each vertebrae of his spine
with her tongue.

With each calm stroke
warmly welcomed,
she smiles and gifts him
the strength to leave her.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

On Warmth (To Cross Out Each Sound With a Word)

“…don’t let any parts of us be amputated that could be expansive for us”
~Irigaray

Coming back.
A map can be heard in a hive’s song of wings,
to follow, with soft dark feet. I have positioned
my chair about two metres behind the others,
the legs pushed deep into the turf.

Your hair is longer, more gray, your lips thinner.
A less dramatic sideshow. I follow your breath by
the lift and drop of your shoulders, the finger
tracing the podium.

The sun throbs behind my lobes. I am too far for
your words, just outside their reach, I imagine
skeins, some transparent consonants, stretching
towards me,

divest of their meaning, I could touch them, just
the sensation of an S whistled through the abacus
of your teeth, resting on my fingertips. I spread
my hands upwards

on my knees to catch them, the mathematics of
your sound. Later in bed, when you ask me what
I thought, I touch your lips, lean forward to push
my tongue into your mouth.
Into the swarm.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Meridian

She is not going home, not yet.
It all recedes, the sound of him rattling
up and down the verandah, insomniac
louvres chattering.
Behind the shed she sits
on the pigeon shit, outstaring the darkness.
Here she is unbreakable. Alone with
the jigsaw of her hands, with all
their disquiet, the slough
of unusable areas of memory.
The wisteria hisses close
to her ear, sleep
sleep


Inside, he sinks into silence,
he can feel her still
close. In the darkness.
Her loud smile full of teeth, exclusive
greedy girl. It starts to hail.
He waits, snarls,
stubborn bitch