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.