Uncategorized

Conversation with Slugs and Sarah

Up late watching slug porn, you confess
you had a boyfriend who could spin you

like that, slug grace and slug ballet — we don’ t
touch the topic of slime — and those eyes

dangling from tentacle tips must be a
kind of love or lust, sighting farther and

nearer all at once. (But are those eyes?)
Slug sublimity suggests love’ s a drag,

touch that lingers and leaves a wet trail of
memory and... What did we do before

YouTube? Boob tube. Boobs we have none; slugs,
of course, don’ t care, can’ t tell girl from boy,

This Landscape Before Me

Is unwritten, though it has lived in violence.

First the factory stood, quiet as an asylum.
Then the annihilating mallee with its red fists of blossoms
and the mountain ash creeping over it like a stain.

I have no proof, but I tell you
there were leadlight windows here once, barred.
They cast a little striped light on the women.

Now in scrub and yellow broom I stand on a history
braided and unbraided by stiff Irish wrists.
The rope and span and carded wool are unpicked
as are their faces and names.

A Fable

Purveyor of  rot and whatnot,
entrepreneur of  I forgot,
with wrists hard as hammers —
that birthmark a slot —

grip it, strip it, flip it hard —
ramp my shard.
If  fear be sexy, a synch
& a match —

Gone the way of  wax & worms —
gone like November 2011 —
sweet by nature, mean by culture —

“Goodbye, luck, you idiot,”
said the Fox to the Grapes.
“I love you,” replied the Grapes.

The Visitor

Does no dishes, dribbles sauce
across the floor. Is more dragon
than spaniel, more flammable
than fluid. Is the loosening
in the knit of me, the mixed-fruit
marmalade in the kitchen of me.
Wakes my disco and inner hibiscus,
the Hector in the ever-mess of my Troy.
All wet mattress to my analysis,
he’ s stayed the loudest and longest
of any houseguest, is calling now
as I write this, tiny B who brings the joy.

From “Mankindness”

1

Because he, because she,
in so far as
she (in so far as he) exists

is on the way
to battle.

Not what is your name,
but what
the battle?

2

“Each one of us has come
here and changed” —

is the battle. Born
a loved one,
borne a loved one.

3

My father fought in this war, thus I can speak of it.
My mother fought in this, thus I can speak.
My friends, my lovers have fought, have worn
(like the tree) their several directions at once. And I,

Minnows 2

Whatever the cost I pay up at the minnow pools.
I don’ t know anything of the misery of these trapped fish,
or the failure of the marsh I’ m so hidden.

Up above is the island with its few houses facing
the ocean God walks with anyone there. I often
slosh through the low tide to a sister
unattached to causeways.

It’ s where deer mate then lead their young
by my house to fields, again up above me.

Pray for me. Like myself be lost.
An amulet under your chest, a green sign of the first
rose you ever saw, the first shore.

Room

After it came in like a dark bird
Out of the snow, barely whistling
The notes father, mother, child,
It was hard to say what made us happiest.

Seeing the branches where it had learned
To stir the air? The air that opened
Without fear? Just the branches
And us in a room of wild things?

Like a shapeless flame, it flew
A dozen times around the room.
And, in a wink, a dozen more.
Into the wall, the window, the door.

Pages