between your touch
and my cry
between the sea
and the dream of the sea
part her darkness with your tongue
still she remains hidden
silk drenched against skin
brine and oil the sea on platters
tables crowded glasses and bottles
a life your own left behind
a note in a hotel room
damp small of her back
rope of hair dripping
rain that tastes of an answer
across the folding dusk
gold against dark wool
a grasp of loosened hair
between the lit room
and the dark lagoon
tangled we come even those
who can’t move at all
those who have earned the right to speak
in absolutes
those who have nothing
to eat our fill at the empty table
each word a chemistry binding us
to particular endless
longings we take now as our own
the tormenting literature that names forever
those moments between clothing and skin
all and
all you live without
the place you cannot touch
yourself
the place between love
and the dream of love
fruit misshapen with sweetness and rot
the morbid mortal beauty
of this sonnet or that
words that taste of an answer
waterstained wallpaper burgundy
bedcover a room so small
every movement means touching
felled by the rain,
we woke and thought it was night
by blows, struck
to the depth
of flesh, of
haunting and naming
the first words uttered
from that silence
the silence where love emerges
sung by a ghost
who taught me my life was not my own
who taught me to take nothing
hurtling through the narrow pass
suspended along the cliff’s edge
a violent lurch, a wrenching
each choice obliterating another
from exhaustion, to suffer for days
something forgotten
saturated with love
aching to make perfect
smear of lanterns in the fog
crates scraped against stones,
carried and dropped laughter and
blame in reply the endless ballad
of waves against embankment
entering centuries,
you lay on the palace floor
and looked up watching clouds open
the only sunlight that mid-winter day
in that painted ceiling
that first night I dreamed of a forest
I will never again wake with such peace
green darkness rain stitching roots
through earth
winter sweetness
of the barn, cold as underground
and what was bare and still
was full of movement snow darkened
with stars how much that hope
hurt and yet
purple dusk, yellow winter sky
we arrive again an innumerable
entering as if from another life
saved by a moment
standing in a doorway inconsolable
error avoided in an instant
everything spent and slipping through
as if at last we had it right, as if
unharmed
as if we had, as if we had not,
the light fell
shakes again, sediment
in the blood what the nape
remembers, pushed to the ground,
or the eyes, or the vitals
sweating awake, snowy morning,
black trees. the body leaps to be rid of itself,
or takes what it needs. the body
turns to its own explanation knowing
“I cannot live without you” and
“this too shall pass”
the lump in the throat
moving with each swallow
draw deep the oar into that blackness
nothing heavier than hewing the abyss
to stay afloat
the entire weight of the sea
pulled by a narrow blade
and no matter how deep the turning,
the scratch and salt of the stars remain
into the water
where they are not
extinguished
each lamp sets fire to the sea,
igniting where it drowns