words & pictures
Falling I eat leaves They have the gritted Pungency of autumn As if humus were the mired death of whales Between the narrows, the soughing shore Rain tastes like, an oscillating erosion Breathe, breathe a breath There is a leviathan Waiting in your throat To hail flukes In a last flung shout Of escape
That rockmelon moon Leant to a smile A girl, leaf brown Fell from a tree From limbs with mouths That age old gnarl Turned yellow eve, russet, sun lost Spiralled down to holes and with The endless shape Of clasped hands In her soughing, see-saw breath From the morning, scattered
A leaf-curl sneer As if autumn fish-hooked petulance From the wet corner of your mouth Almost lemons The laundry scent Not quite a Sunday seaside Still muggy with The thick damp cloth Of March wrung out Until your paled hands Annoyedly dripping Slip on the too-tight, criss-cross tap Overcast and Creased as deserts Speaking sideways The cement sarcophagus deep Strands of hair and muck As grim as pharaoh’s echoing Coriolis voice Rictus lips and In the darkly narrow drain, a glint
