Cycles: three poems
I. erosion
she palms the space she is in for living forms
of twin matter
sullying the water with her fingers
she whispers to the Bluefin tuna on the shoals
feeds them sediment scraped from the backs of her teeth
they circle her ankles in quiet solace
Massachusetts isn’t cruel to her
but she suffers a transoceanic ache
her scream juts out to the coastline–
a blue shark whips away into the crest
of something sudden and sharp
she came clad in icesheets stripped from the Atlantic
became a soul shedding seasoap
II.formation
I move my memory mouth over a
wet clay model with knees of glass
collecting wax leaves that scale from
her sheer cheek
I carry her dislocated stone organs
like jewels
in corporeal chasms lined with silk
she is formless and I am whole
III. respiration
light forged into golden lacework
curtains our soft corrosion
warms us into live metalwork
a sycamore bows shyly to us
echoing ripples into each gilded vertebrae
encouraging me
to bend to your sore chemistry
to show her
the spirited friction
of our gentle jeweled bodies
breathing in a resistance to rot