Swanilda, Some Years Later
She blew mechanical
kisses
not even to him
at audience unseen
resembling him
behind a screen
And it’s so much work
being
flesh
and feelings
even love
even loneliness
As much as
I love to dance
alone
sometimes I want
a partner
whose limbs I don’t
have to move
whose words I don’t
have to imagine
Being young and
full of mazurka
I thought I could
save him fix him
wind him up
his enamel eyes
would see me
follow me
light up even
not asking for anything
I wouldn’t be giving
Not yet realizing
the world was full
of Coppélia
each one an assembly
of pixelated perfect
body parts
each one blowing
mechanical kisses
The Monster in the Cave
The night you killed me
I lay down in a bed of esparto and sweet sea daffodils
that my sisters made for me.
My serpents whisper-sang
sibilant lullabies
as you crept into my cave
seeing by the mirror of your shield
which shimmered like my mother’s pool
where she raised us; we didn’t know
we were monsters then
as we splashed and slithered in the tide.
As in terror you approached me
I dreamt of my father
how he took me to the deepest depths of sea
to meet the invisible octopus and strange beautiful creatures
that you would call monsters.
The moment your blade kissed the nape of my neck
still somnolent I thought it was Poseidon’s breath
saltwater cool against the pulse of my throat.
As your sword detached my brain
my body gave strange birth
to sons I’ll never see—one with wings
like me
a monster
so beautiful
but you didn’t notice.
You just took my face to be your weapon.
Moth Colours
Through my one flower eye
I see the nocturnal.
Mine is not an eye
with lid for slumber:
it beholds butterfly
and moth alike
and sees you are moth.
No day dazzler
something mystery—
a puzzle, a maze—
striving toward whatever light you can get.
You too pollinate
those flowers that don’t close to you.
Your tricked out antennae
and patterned night coat
keep you blended in
Camouflaged beauty
I see you, I see you.
Muse
remove your boots
I tell my muse
pointing to where
I’d left my shoes
he wears them in
trod clumps of sod
sprinkling my new-swept tent
he stretches on the sleeping bag
where I sit cross-legged
pen and paper ready
his body unbalancing
where have you been?
the wood’s too damp to light
the wind is wrong
and I can’t write
he slides an earth-whorled finger
along my white lace hem
his breath like after-rain
tempting me to sprouting ground
he smells of loam and grass and musk
and I wonder who else he’s been inspiring
wash up, I say,
you’ve moss beneath your fingernails
your hands are too clean,
he replies,
too sterile
that’s why your page is blank
with one small sharp move
he unbuttons
fronds and fawn lilies falling from his pockets
I pluck a twig from his beard bark rough
yet soft as the seeds of dandelions
the faint sibilance of bees
Coyote City
The dragon howls through the city, cutting it into two
agendas.
Years ago there was a bond to silence it
but it never happened, nor should it:
we who are so bespelled need to be howled awake.
We forget a moving barrier isn’t always a barrier.
At night an animal is distinct from the landscape
only by its ears, or by its moon eyes,
if you, like me, are unlucky and carry a flashlight.
Oblong.
A small rabbit huddles in a lawn, eating shadows.
Pointed ears on the sidewalk, a cat probably, or a trick.
Movement, flashlight reveals its colours.
Not mine.
Not mine.
I keep on.
Once there were no coyotes here.
There were wolves.
The dragons drove them away, the story would go,
or the cars with their eyes as yellow as wolf eyes.
Then the coyotes came. Coyly. They didn’t rush in:
it took generations to get so cosmopolitan,
sauntering the creek bed boulevard,
bat smoke rising from the chimney in the schoolyard
just beyond.
My cat is cautious and avoids the creek bed.
It takes him generations to cross a threshold.
He knows there’s safety in height,
unless the coyotes spring wings one night,
shaggy angel wings. Why not?
The god of coyotes is generous.
But tonight Bast is my goddess.
If I say a prayer, it is to her.
I don’t know how she feels about rabbits.
Who they pray to is an eternal mystery,
a god who has forgotten,
devoured and forgotten
in the belly of the dragon.
The flashlight shows a truth
and lies—
there was no one here until the coyotes came.
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