You made pyjama soup
Lemon, eggs, basmati
In a witchy broil
Sleeve dipped thrice for auguries
The way Macbeth’s crones crowed
A particularly unpleasant hunger
Soft as eyes, and sour sweet
In transit
A spot of black
Against, slick-bright
An unknown planet
A veined eye still watching
Toast mostly blacked and cut
In strips thin as a walking forest
Smeared on your lips
The glistered, noisome mask
Of any revenger’s tragedy
The battle almost done
Just dregs and crumbs
Of midnight’s salt & pepper folly
Hungering
For the reassurance of your face
Jaw thrust forward, a monstering
Marionetted palsy
Of strings and pinions
Inexpertly manipulated
I met you once
In another world
Ate a stale biscuit
Threw it up again
The sky in soot and butter
Curlicues and approbations
When I was a dog, for a while
Glass house, all lies, no windows
Barked at the moon
At her silver mockery
Barked again, in the dark
When she was gone
Stars like tears
The poet said
But I was just a dog
Alone and
Not done howling
There is
As much light
In a glass of rain
As the work
Of flowers’ basking faces
The strayed mischance
Slanting by
The boards’ sopranino-clef
I thought of you
Left the glass
Drained to the pale silt
Of passing Sunday afternoons
On the ledge
Almost unseen
The way a drop
On a broad green leaf
Swole to a cyst
Pours away
A swan passing
With that complex
Treble-clef insistence
Of her bent-necked attention
Veils and shrouds
Are almost the same
In the way they hide your mouth
Broke from reverie
With the kind of equine start
That warily insists
Hand inadvertently flickering
Against unseen adumbrations
That slight, eroded horizon
Fell to winter’s shards
The blood drops leaching
From lax fingers, raised to lips
The warm, silent taste
Too bright to dismay
Another shallow sunrise
New day has a fabric rip
The pyrethrum scent of last night’s neglected pans
Basmati and burnt metal
Slept with the sun inside
Woke weakly flailing
In your bite, a hard, machinic smile
A ridge against my wrist like sunrise
Broke a mouse’s neck
A small, uncoiled scream
Dragged up the hinge
The bared teeth, gladiatorial in glory
The tongue an ugly twist
Imagining a thousand crucifixions
Along the Appian way
These brief lives another paltry annoyance
Marking the dwindling distance
Between failure and victory
