Odd Wedding, and: Stalemate

Odd Wedding

Vows

As I threaded the aisle of the church (or was it
the path by the shore? the path to your arms?) the voice
said hoist your lungs for a sail. I did,
and the lungs, finally loose

from their cage, fluttered
off pink and gray. I stood
in the aisle (or the path toward the shade, the vein
in your wrist?), and the first curl of flood

looped my ankle. The voice said hoist
your stomach, then. I did,
and up it went, a blood-red
banner tossed

on the breeze to a pin-prick rag
that sailed the known
globe to snag on the peak of a thorn.
The voice droned on:

hoist your liver, ether lover -
the liver slipped out through my side
but never sailed up: stayed creeping
behind, a blue black shade

on the water's face, the moment's
firmament not yet with us,
just the swirl I thought
was your ear. And the voice

said hoist your heart. I did, with anxious
ripping, and saw my heart,
aloft in the air, was a fist, clenched
as the wave hit.

The Bouquet

I felt her voice lifted behind me,
then perched on the crook of my ear,
the crook of one branch off the root
of my skull, with the earliest

eel of evening swimming
across the horizon. And the branches swayed
thick with blackbirds flapping their sickle
shadows, their chirping

the sound of babies in the womb. An ocean
tucked into the palms
of her hands, indigo, ravenous,
tossing up bones.

Marriage Bed

I take off my shirt behind a tree.
My left breast weaves into bird nest
with three pearly eggs; my right breast
a coiled serpent, with one gold-green

visible eye (raised eager
like my nipple). The sky contracts.
A self divides like railroad tracks
beneath your weight, as stars flicker.

Offspring

Wishing to demonstrate my love for you,
I cut my arm from my shoulder
and put it in water. After a few
days, yellow buds cover each finger

like warts, then finally bloom.
Their moon-disc petals flare dozens
of echoes, or ears, a bee tucked into the pale
parentheses of each inflorescence.

Yet see here no mere vase, no mere
spray of umbels: my gnarled arm
splits the earth at your feet, elbow to the core,
fingers holding above you the humming

sun, stretching your shadow across my body's
new angles. Later I'll pin
that sun to your lapel,
and, yes, we'll walk in the open.

Stalemate

What are you thinking?
Of minnows, or moths,
or nothing at all,
my head in your lap,
the trembling lip
of the window sill,
or aren't you sure?
Perhaps you're not the man
I thought you were;
perhaps my body here,
close as this, becomes clouds
and air, pure space
for flight. I wonder
if your brain's a bird,
a coal-blue crow
that flaps to the tops
of the poplar trees,
its storm eye condensing me
(or just what remains
of me, speck and shadow)
to a strand of tinsel.
And through those binoculars
where all the colors
in the veins of my wrist
twist a gnarled oak,
your brain with its blue veer,
a leaf in its beak,
makes a nest in my hand.
But soon it soars far
above this dangerous land.