All The Way Home

i

Beginnings deteriorate
Even the second knock sounds
an imitation

The scraping of shoes on the mat
the soil trapped in the tread
The space once travelled
which then feels known
arches back like a snare

There is a particular silence
only found under the feet
of a traveller at rest

As windows of hotels sing back
at the motors of aeroplanes


ii

To stretch your arms
around both sides of his body
Pull him close to your chest
rock the squalling flesh
into a curved hush like
a horizon


iii

These soft annunciations
breathed into frontiers
of hard flesh

dewclaw words coiling
beside a tangle of legs
agape in silence
at the look of things

The pigment darkens
as skin covets its own
articulation


iv

In summer
made pretty by smell
of frangipanis

There are these mornings
where heat deadens everything
where
you don’t remember your own name
until you hear it

What if you lay with a stranger?
What if you fell asleep and woke
beside him?
Recognised your shape in the sheets
your colour against the white

Could you coyly
become a sound?


v

Geometric alphabet
with its sharp edges
offers no security for the memory
It cannot keep the devout
gushing of the mouth

greedily taking in what it can
hold of the voice
what it can retain of what was seen
bristling in the water

This point
which cant be reached
can be called separation
no matter the distance

Blue Alice

absurdity of trying
to grip a fish
with needle fins
as it flaps gills
gulps choking air

hook mouth
to a memory
silence swells
to a freak wave
a wall of water

the smallness
of a body sucked
ten metres under
water beneath
a ledge of rock

Forearm

to thought

swollen bulb
to
thumbprint

mouth to valve

words that barely
fit in
the throat

i
drop to
your

pillowcase

Making Room

describing you
to myself

i pour hot

in silence
an ampoule

cooled glass

a moment
before desire

Seminal

Deep in the throat
they laugh-
hungry little bodies
with their pointing bones
fastened with buttons
hooking eyes

He has seen her
alone
through her window
turning her body in
the mirror

This is a gift
(she tells him)
Takes his wrist

Fingertips focus
in childlike
desire

It may take
root
grow inside
leave accompanied
by words and sounds
Thoughtless

In her parents’ bed
Red mouth agape
she listens to his
whispers

He lies
beside her
slightly
Off-centre

Counterpart

When I watch you choose your face in the morning.
When you hold the silk voice to your unshaven cheek.
Muffle questions with the scarf of your full throat.
I want to bite your tiny glass fingers,
snag the fibres of your lungs
in my clenched cat teeth
with indifference.

It stays like this,
holds to the refrain.
Strains to open and wriggle free
then leans back into itself.
A perfect disciple.

This is how we queue to touch you.
In the middle of your chest
dousing for certainties-
through the ribs,
through the pink flesh,
through the mouth.

Sensed Through Opaque Windows

It’s hard to understand architecture
when my past is sea and desert.

It could be that these things are not
simultaneous.
When you kiss me and the inside of your mouth is the colour of mulla mulla, it makes my feet burn. Then, I am standing on the red earth in the middle of the day and a girl’s voice shouts “you look deadly sis”.
Beside you now in this rectangle of flowers, in the pocket of my black jersey dress, my fingers find forgotten cherry pits (I ate them to wash those last words out of my mouth)

These pieces of memories I haven’t known
lie lightly.

Undone by the closeness of the ocean, forgetting returns in pieces. With the skin of my body resting on the skin of your body. We form small patches of darkness between us-
As smoke, leaving, the fire aspires to a more spacious form.

Todays encased
in yesterdays
Tiny birds in eggshells