bright light

I can't think of you without a high bright sound
like the rim of glass spun with music under
your finger- I can't think of you without a sweet
bright light that makes morning of my eyes.

Bright light that makes morning of my eyes
hollows out the reeds in your wrists-- your bones
are veins that hold honey, old bee-stings, honeycomb cells.
I can't think of you now without a wildflower-bright under
my bones-- my bones dance and lilt with the coloured light,
the tumbled-down laugh I get when I think of how
the old days are rusting in the long grass.

The old days are rusting in the long grass.
I am balanced on the fence, and when I waver you catch me.
And I can't think of the bones in your hand-- how they move under your skin,
how they are strong and bright and hold the light like September fields,
how they close like a sun-white crab to make me straight--
I can't think of the bones in your hand without a
hum as long and bright as the summer.

Hum as long and bright as the summer;
your voice pulses like a Greek seaside town,
the smell of sage; your tuneless happy drowns all sound.
I stand up straight inside myself; my sight goes double and you are

everywhere now. I squint at you like a girl
who's lost her glasses, laughing as I
feel around for them helplessly in the long grass.

Fillevox

Does it frighten you when I speak? Intricacy
in the shape of leaf-skeletons, the dry skin on
my lips, the pitch of my voice so high above
yours-- does it make you shiver to hear me?

My voice is sweet like a D.H. Lawrence fig,
it is round with the promise of my womb,
it is downswung like a child on a swing as I

make empty promises, laugh at you from
behind my hair. The calendar marks off days
the size of an eggcup; I fill them quickly with
the langour in my limbs, the way I can't make up
my mind. I talk to you in riddles: a peach, a pomegranate,
a meddler, a service tree.

And I am milk and you are cereal.
And I am bread; I am salt; I am
a paper you write on. We are
like all things that come in pairs--
we stir into each other at times like tea.
We query each other in furious stage-whispers.
Your hand looks knobby and awkward
next to mine.

Do you look down suddenly when you hear
my honey-mustard throating? What red-throated
hummingbirds know as they duck their needle-mouths
into the pitchers of flowers is what you still
have left to learn. There is not another like me
across five continents.

Recitation

I cast about for something solid
to hold onto: to read a poem to
an audience of strangers. Stanzas
once crawled off my fingers like
many-coloured daddy-long-legs
now need only tumble off my chin
like chestnuts, like iris-eyed echoes.
Their fingers press innocently on the
salmony skin of the people who listen,
willowy and bent awkwardly in places
they were meant to be straight.

You've come up behind me so fast.
I can't find my feet. They stretch out
as pulp and panic, searching for the sand.
Salty and grey-eyed you tug at my hair.
I won't get over the bruises for weeks.
I laugh in a crowded hall, the cherry and
bold of a poem hot with lamplight smoothing
my skin like bread in an oven.

(You've come up behind me so fast.)

Front Porch With Flowers

I can't
get used to the fact of you, the
flesh-and-bloodness, the feel of you
rough and warm like the bark of trees.
I cannot get used to your imprint, the red
folds on my skin from sleeping against
the knowledge of you.

Brown as nutmeg in the sun, I've
lain end-to-end with the rest of humanity--
I can't get used to the feel of them,
the smoky smell from their matchstick souls.
The heat is a visible noise, bright and
bell-loud on my skin. This is
a freight train of light, an insect-thick
cloud of illustration; I cannot get used to
the thought of you heavy as a stone in my hand,
I cannot think through this haze of summer.
My eyes and fingers blossom red like lacy
hothouse flowers.

False Prairies

It takes a while to learn what it means, living in the country;
men walk by politely in an aura of sun-stale cigarettes. I
flirt with a boy who ends up dizzying me with old sweat
like discoloured tin. Some thunderous, black-eyed Raskolnikov
he makes, cuts on his fingers not cleaned, but dirtied. They heal
out of sheer necessity, with no time for pity. I bow, and wander off,
a Chinese silk-kite girl.
You keep your backyard wild-cucumbered over with junk. By
the bread-black ditches, you pace around with your witching
sticks, humming tonelessly. I read Kipling, overjoyed in a truck-bed at dusk.
The wild cucumbers burst delicately underfoot. Some sulfurous, hard-eyed Gilgamesh
he makes, shoulders back against the wind of this
false prairie.
I played my trick a day too early.
Peach-yellow and frail, light wafts through like onion skins,
you think of yourself in terms of stone-white bones.
The sun rackets off the hood of a car. The lines
come early in our foreheads here. Some fountainous,
cobalt-eyed Lear he makes against an egg-blue barn;
the fingers twitch and tug up dandelion leaves. I've got
the fingers of my one hand woven into this town down to the webs.
What my other hand is reaching for is anyon'e guess. Typhoid-bright,
the clouds go cotton, the spires of trees up against the sky are
more or less divine.

Apparently Living

I wanted to think about you clearly, the way you
think clearly about a bottle of green glass
full of coins in your bedroom,
the way the light hits it in the morning
and your eyes blink with early.

I was apparently living then, my
head wrapped in silk because
I am a head of corn-- my pearly
gold is a treasure I put in your hands:
a harvest of happy, a rustling field.
We played music for hours then, my
teeth tingling from the harmonicas,
your fingers numb. I tumbled over a
bale of daydreams; your fingers played
with my hair-- I was apparently living then.