Annelida, My Love and Yours, and: Show Me Yours, and: Prayer Is the Little Implement, and: Compose an Evening Sky

Annelida, My Love and Yours

Spiny-headed and spiny-crowned,hook and round,acorn, peanut, phallus,

velvet, goblet, jaw, ribbon, tongue,the tape and the flat,and, finally, the segment—

Annelida of the Ganglia,Grand Dame of Dirt,Hermaphrodite of Nerves

and of Love. With her vineof five hearts and will to woo,who touches us all at last.

Show Me Yours

The mouth is the shapeof sound, the openingI have for you.

Shelterof flesh and wind.

Vowels in the attic.Valves sweat and spit.

And if I whisper your namewe are close as matchesflowering pink.

The names you yell at night,in the day. The namesyou chew like pebbled bread.

Breakage is such sweet sorrow.

Press them hard againstthe back of your teeth.

Now drumrollas they crumble:

Tom, tom-tom,tom, tom.

Can I spit you out?Can I (safely) hold you in?

What is it like in agony,in ecstasy. Inflections changethe sound the mouth makes.

I watched

for centuries, collecting teethon a chain. Charmedby the various faces

of decay. Braceletof bone and chatter.

Everywhere I go, they follow. Chit.Red impressions etchthe wrist.

Like a mother,Let me wipe your mouth.

Like a lover,Let me love your mouth.

Exit becomes entrance.Entranced by your bellows.

The men in their poems are incessant.Incessant poems with Ophelia or Sabineor Charlotte this, Charlotte that.

A gumdrop girl in your pocketand the terrible lint of words.

How large your hunger,how empty your mouth.

Poem mouth, prison mouth,suitcase mouth, or river of milk.

Fishmouth stuffed with ovalsand a bouquet of namesgaping for air.

Mouths wear pretty ruffled headsand drown in black water.

Flesh houseof arrival, of departure.

Entrance becomes exit.Entranced by your hollows.

Wait for me at the archwaywearing pink.

Lick along the gumlineas we dissipate

(last cry, last kiss).

When we're dying and aloneall the loves come back.

Sing, no. Swallowtheir brief return.

Prayer Is the Little Implement (Title and italics from Emily Dickinson)

Tool or tooth. Carving or cut. Lesion lined in mud. In this way,words are not accretion, unless like rain where the gatheringsglimmer and fall. Fail. And fail a word for the body giving out, asin: your father is failing. Prayers gather and fall. Fail. No other artwould do. If this is art, puddle and swell, so the garden eventuallydrowns. Each grain, each letter another meager little. Defenselesstool in a deluge. Eyelash to row your boat. Sing a song to keep uscompany while we soak through: Little Woe Weep has lost hersleep, or A hack on pills went up a hill to fetch a pain of daughter.Put down the scalpel and syntax. The meaningless hum of rain.

Compose an Evening Sky (Title and italics from Emily Dickinson)

that resists. Neon lit with greasy oranges and pinks. Funerealflowers weep entire, damp with wilting. Clutch a tourist's post-cardof the slivered night (which means we're just visiting). Father,I am poor once more without you. This bloody weather rubs methin. Thin breath. Skinned ribs. Snow geese cry overhead, a prosceniumof crumple and din. The phosphorescent scar of the moonturns its pocked cheek.

Now descends a blackened-blue scrim clotted with lint. A moltingof just moments before. Azure decomposure. Erosion's humblefate. This edgeless blankery poor without you. Your palace nightlydisintegrates.