wombatical

Mary, whose roses wilt in the evening streetlight bent through the window of her elbows resting far from the river carrying her bright secret home, Mary of too many letters piling one on top of another and whose poetry unwedded weeped under her bed in the black box of an unbroken garden her fingers red clay on the brick and bones of a tired family a long room in heat and Mary your blood a red crest bursting out from the low grave of your father or through the fields where I lay down beside you Mary in the baptising heat of your new wound we were children in the dying grass opening ourselves beneath egg-white skies a

And in prayer, Lord we forget ourselves forget our hands forget our fingers forget eyes mouth tongue bent double curled up Lord, we forgive ourselves make what's right and good- whatever, Lord do not teach us how to live do not rope us together we small and buried blooming, open impressions of cat's skulls grinning wicked singing magic light-folded bent like leaves straying from our brutal imaginations,  Lord forever is so long and so long and so long with nothing but rain snow Your incredible machine, we are lost seaweed in rivers Lord, open canvas of tents Lord, bruised petals of roses Lord, we cannot touch our eyelids, we do not grow in sh

whispering we built so many beautiful things- bent ribs convex mirrors ashen jewelweed pouring through bones  how we suffer for the wood. nails  tack    canvas rope bound boat moored in the lake salt licked water cold goosebumps 4:30 AM in a raincoat. dawn is three hours before in texas and  we tip- toe in black light of wells. crushed cornflowers mud sifting through the clear plastic bag  nights we forget have forgotten for peace.  the house bent low to the lake, aging streetlights birds in the living room and already I am in love searching for the warm places in the moon-lit floor delica

Because you are here, Because you met me between two fields, Because you wrote of freckled angels, And Because you twirled under that streetlight on one good ankle, silent supernaturally smooth Because your hair hung loose on the car seat   as you touched your head to my shoulder and Because your ears were impossibly sweet Considering your post-it notes, your pens and your papers, considering your words in ink and your name in lipstick and Because of the birth mark at the nape of your neck, because your wrists slow sound on my wrists Because you are the front porch, the lamp, the screen door, the hands soft on welded skin

there are, first of all, the red flowers-- already they are blooming, already they line the soft parts, petals wound     round tense cords, flesh excited button at night he would taste thier colored insides, sketch paleness on thier fingers these they would take for themselves, spread filaments  clutch cradle of man-  hood, spent currency of bliss these they bent inward, leaves entangled crept up through the hips; oh love, how can i describe it to you? only as a pair of foxes atop a ridge, a grove of cherry trees ripe red in the summer.

don't worry mother, your daughter craves a lot of things-- the sky is pregnant and wet at the hips; sweet ridge of body i'll break when right in moonglow. much nerves over nothing. when, after all: what good is dust on her wrists? chapped tips of her fingers i'll soften in twilight, strip of the bracelets and writer's lead. so much for blood on her pillow; mint of our hotel. bags I'll carry with pictures for home. see? your baby still dresses in red still licks her lips when thirsty: what difference in her taste? she'll come around [don't say she won't]. the frilled skirt you bought still rests in her suitcase. nothing else but em

                                           who enter whispering whose rest Whose tired working Whose backs are broken legs of a chair Whose chorus are cracked stones here in the sun drying whose nest Whose ashes machine woven burnt shoulders smoke in the factories Whose bodies frail as cigarette paper named Trutnov, Whose word means dying black bones two girls huddled for warmth whose stories are invisible feet running past fences, one would make from skin to escape Whose dirt whose trees cleared in the night of shattered glass, wept all morning overturned tombstones now fifteen girls, Whose bread whose soup means a long time

O currents, low watch the ground run rave, cry cusped shoulders hunch, whisper running of jaw to thigh; tip to bone, blue and sliding oh, this struck panting pink, lit me up hard gaping, bite down you'll taste lust and copper, creeping slow the skin strike smooth the knee-cap, cream for your lips my, my, strip those fingers sung stuck inside; look how shy the wall looks back. soon, not yet o currents bled young, kiss to stop the maddening still please just us. why do you moan so sudden where, here? come lower, arch up I want the neck stiff shocked, wrists stretched mouth move stumbling, grip solar plexus, o current I g

mama talk to your daughter, talk to your daughter for me i come here, am birthed screaming cotton fields and sunlight, raise up curling fingers through smoke, hooking thumbs in my back pockets, sing rain and crossroads where the devil has slept; where i grow assured of wind, Missouri tide and Texas rope bound my hands and sat me down on heaven's chair, i have become number zero-six-six-two-six saved through reform and gunmetal bibles, tears come easy  in this valley of red clay, where i was baptised in the chorus of Muddy Waters, ran parallel coyotes and skybreaks pour through the reeds of my one harmonica, my one

For us, our portrait and jungle, sketching charcoal imprints naked in the banana leaves. Retching violent palmprints pressed down into the sand, the sea tide beckons with crooked pinky, asks us questions but we're too tired to hear, too much submission and obedience; resolving then to forget this beach, this dimebox where you promised the deep valley would wait, would close up or fade away in the figured wheel of memory. Except now it hangs brooding schism regretting, now it grows impassable for me and not you. Don't go, don't leave, stay and I'll promise the wings erupted from shoulder blades, the sexual hip and collar bones, the taste of l