Poems
from soft hoods of saints
wolf
a small magazine its bright yellow cover. shiny. cute as a book. black and
white
comic awaiting young readers in the penultimate pages. a new virgin
martyr. this
saint. her thick story. too much black ink in the artist’s
bodies and words. this young
girl who resisted her attacker, the room whispers rape.
the slash stab of his knife
raised in the air like a raged eye of a prophet,
his hair slick as a fifties film star. this
tale of the holy maria goretti
to stalk young girl catholics; would it scare them so
quietly they might
even laugh. a subscription to ‘harvest’ was almost compulsory,
like the perfect girl who would always choose death.
nocturnal emission
the mouth fills with land
after midnight it’s hard
to understand if you’re
not there at the wharf
it might take some stretch
of the imagination you walk
off the water with your mouth
wide open and new countries rush
to fill it, a tongue identifies them
[diviner chef fleece classer, badges
of a history of taste]:
providence,
nocturnal
providore,
a geography
of
faith, when you swallow you
don’t
choke on a wild herb’s lotion
decorum
making room
in the room where
space is in its conceptual
phase : always room for more room
you are surprised how little space a body
takes up
& the air a great host how a ledge of birdsong amplifies the
book
of
the room : epic wheeling across the ambient ceiling stoic
wall inhalation
the paper of words: make believe lives, like a
life : survival minutiae & the
carpet wove so deep with rumour
news hour
take a walk through the sky windows
dark as books beyond the reach of
the usual scarf of motives how the red
lamp soars, its coal interior a passionate
revival in spite of the capitulation
of ash and
those magnetic oaths the tower simmers as it leans backwards
into the emerald
shadow the ticker tape fraying the memory
all its sorrow