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.

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

Something Special :)

Dear All,

I have been very quiet lately as life has thrown some interesting lessons my way.. however while I have been looking the other way my words have been found their way to be havened in a most perfect manner by beautiful editor and publisher, Amanda Oaks, of Verve Bath Press.
For your own copy of the hundred printed to have and to hold, please follow this link...
Verve Bath Press


Enjoy!
with love
A.Joy
x

Drawn Resting

charcoal rasps
vespers
as I try to draw
from memory

a beach near Ise
with soft rocks
that turn to powder
at touch

a gentle slippage
of ritual and
desecration

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