Excerpt from “I AM YOU”
I don’t know whether to take her apologizes at face value, allow the words to breed deep in my mind like the oiled dynasty of sea-sick seabirds, oily-oily night and oil spills. Dark money, Texas implants and veins catacombed with graves of landmines; dark chunks of tar under her Chanel skin.
Sorry, her word of no consequence.
*
I don’t know how to walk away from her slick feathers, like a latent photograph needing belief to develop. I ache with an alphabet tangled in sea whip, salty with longing. Shells in the crook of elbows, dusting of grit, rocks, animal and sea. She placed these portals, these fossils in me like words. Scratchy scratchy words…
*
And what is a better word for body? Inside seashell shell blowing breath tastes like fire. Empty ashen, yet warm like hot fruit in the sun— sand in the mouth hair whipping--
Infinite waves sod sea dust sky?
*
The reasons have left us, all we have are the flight patterns of birds. She is demystified and the same. Detach, the counselor urged. Honing me thick on the resolve, the need for resolve, and years later, I found her. Still. Jackie. In that lost humid town, near her ignorant family. Tied to their problems. Tied to her problems. Her little girl, gone— Seared-heart, ex-junkie, Jackie. Just as used and beautiful as a thousand wilted chrysanthemums. Faces blur, bodies blur, the bodies in the city move by, and I feel her heat in another. Time and place.
*
Our drama, our jealousies, our slumber bed is reliced like a bawdy souvenir shop on a boardwalk. Freakshow, fun, distorting, exhilarating. Love in sweat; salty exhaustive confusion. Were we just shooting ducks or playing pinball? Reciting Verlaine by the light of the loon? I have no iambic definition for this, the jeans won’t fit and she haints silence like reefer cloud. Whispers past, ghostly thin, white; laughing in silk charmeuse and calfskin boots. Cruelty, masochism maybe; more mirroring is common when lost.
Who are you? Are you me?
Parrots parrots parrots.
*
She crouches in my shadow with icy needle softness, haunted mouth opens with words so lovely— soundless. Words so lovely roses could grow in the cement of her silence. So complicated this loss. So frozen lakes won’t ice, oceans burn. Sea won’t ice. It burns it burns it burns.
*
I can’t won’t don’t hear your needing me. You tear with the halting of sunset.
I don’t know whether to take her apologizes at face value, allow the words to breed deep in my mind like the oiled dynasty of sea-sick seabirds, oily-oily night and oil spills. Dark money, Texas implants and veins catacombed with graves of landmines; dark chunks of tar under her Chanel skin.
Sorry, her word of no consequence.
*
I don’t know how to walk away from her slick feathers, like a latent photograph needing belief to develop. I ache with an alphabet tangled in sea whip, salty with longing. Shells in the crook of elbows, dusting of grit, rocks, animal and sea. She placed these portals, these fossils in me like words. Scratchy scratchy words…
*
And what is a better word for body? Inside seashell shell blowing breath tastes like fire. Empty ashen, yet warm like hot fruit in the sun— sand in the mouth hair whipping--
Infinite waves sod sea dust sky?
*
The reasons have left us, all we have are the flight patterns of birds. She is demystified and the same. Detach, the counselor urged. Honing me thick on the resolve, the need for resolve, and years later, I found her. Still. Jackie. In that lost humid town, near her ignorant family. Tied to their problems. Tied to her problems. Her little girl, gone— Seared-heart, ex-junkie, Jackie. Just as used and beautiful as a thousand wilted chrysanthemums. Faces blur, bodies blur, the bodies in the city move by, and I feel her heat in another. Time and place.
*
Our drama, our jealousies, our slumber bed is reliced like a bawdy souvenir shop on a boardwalk. Freakshow, fun, distorting, exhilarating. Love in sweat; salty exhaustive confusion. Were we just shooting ducks or playing pinball? Reciting Verlaine by the light of the loon? I have no iambic definition for this, the jeans won’t fit and she haints silence like reefer cloud. Whispers past, ghostly thin, white; laughing in silk charmeuse and calfskin boots. Cruelty, masochism maybe; more mirroring is common when lost.
Who are you? Are you me?
Parrots parrots parrots.
*
She crouches in my shadow with icy needle softness, haunted mouth opens with words so lovely— soundless. Words so lovely roses could grow in the cement of her silence. So complicated this loss. So frozen lakes won’t ice, oceans burn. Sea won’t ice. It burns it burns it burns.
*
I can’t won’t don’t hear your needing me. You tear with the halting of sunset.