Bathing Night

There were half-lit fuses never
quite arrived at anger so we skipped aside
the fracas skirted and held back
a tide with plaster-of-paris poured in.

Our tense faces waiting.

We were drying ourselves at the open flat mask
of the stove, our long flesh licked
by the hot dusk of fire.

The light brightly thrown up like
old water shouldering a fallen rock.
Our feeding of it;
bare.
brave.
recklessly alive.

The main key I grip memory with.

Our unswaddled bodies carping at the
hearthstone
for a fixed redemptive presence.

We never got there; our hopes windowed out
as poor matchstick girls drank
the sputtering light of a dying coal
in our guts.

Unexpected Goodbye

Overall it isn't the eye-clutching
the tut-tutting of a not stopping throat
I fear most;
that close, hungry keening
so climactic for my mother and father.

That knack they have
of pushing the pendulum away
and not expecting the backswing.

My owned dread is the rapid
suspicion coming down like evening
that you have collected
incognito
like raindrops on a scarf, so tiny
and undetected.
I may not see you, I may
shake you out, not feeling
the slow focused point
of memory in my skull's hull.

You might go like a tea-rinse
brushed from threads of
wide-arcing hair, flicked carelessly

your loved body released
and me, so unaware
so unaware
thinking your patter still inside me.

Not exposed,
inside and safe.

Distance Between Lovers

Like lying in a still small pool of water.

Ice water, the veneer of me
pulled back and the flesh
my breasts and stomach
heart and entrails
placed like lapis lazuli upon
the tinder block.

Then
turn, turn, turn;
the buff and shine making
the day dip deeper into me.
The blade curve rounding
thoughts out, 'till they spring
a gleam, a glamour
I can wear to see you;

if it fits.

The rigging of my knuckles, long bones
fingers and rings
at your knotty neck:

whispering this.

When You Left

you were quiet as a guest -
polite, unswerving tact upon exit.
you left certain small gifts.
these provoked our intimate press
when i had them.

one - a new ranging curve
to the heft of my breasts
still like pocked winter pears
loose and low on the bough.

two - secret, delicate parcels of blood.
a thin sac, thin as a moth's wing,
the stretched seat of your bed
this centre now seen
as an empty yawned O.

the yolk dropping through me
as a heavy duck's egg.
drab washing cast over
from your short, wriggling tenure.

my small vanished visitor.

absence beats heavy,
like a heart's drum;
the flat of my feet pat and rise to it.

Spinning Time

Here, hold the end of this line.
I want you to.
I know you do.

See how thin and fine it is?
Hold that line.

It feels thick sometimes, it feels large
and robust with codes of glowing and
I could twine it up into my hair
and wear it like a tangled web of gems
and whispers.

I see it wind around trees and buildings as I let
it unfurl.
Look, there!
It knows where to go,
it is
coming to you.

Some days the line feels vague and small
and I hold on tighter
and wait until we speak what it needs and it
widens and breathes and stretches again.

But even when I'm not holding on as tight as I should
and I know that you can't
because all the dark marching
has flattened you out
it seems to stand on its own...

...waiting.
Singing and winding
and spinning on pause
on a loom we know to find
when we can.

A Cry From the Pond

You keep telling me in silence
in your nonchalant non-response that
I left you unrefined
your light fallen out of the socket
and the track you were walking on kept pulling
and rustling.

Well I couldn't have fixed that.
My needle and thread were built from
the worst leftover steel
and I needed that for patching my own
ripped skin up.

You were the worst cliche of teenage notebooks;
you were a scribbled-in-margins adjective
and never around long enough
to break out in a rash of sentences.
I feel now that I read you on a bus
and somehow smeared the fine print
and mistook your little wave
for a kindness.

I mistook your little wave for an invitation
to give you some words,
when all you wanted
was the cheap trick of delivery
and an easy saunter back for seconds.

I could be wrong;
there's always that.
But I bet every girl you've eaten breakfast with
says those same words
right before she's staring at your crumbs
and an empty chair.

Crush

Dawn is dim and all I think in the new light

is where my mouth burns from yours.

The furnace beneath the skin you sparked

is burning up my lungs.

Your ribs are the earth; your secrets are pressed

under the sand of your skin like shells.

I want to kiss you, dig with my hands

and find you out.

My cunt hungers for yours,

wolfish and sharp and wild.