Spins Are Headlights at Night
nothing is blurred & fast sped – close
your eyes. this is not how you spin
not with outspread arms & after falls –
there’s an art to this: it’s in how well
one’s feet dance; in how much lives
are captured by the blink.
should you take turns into wet fields
with the dead, & spears scattered
all over; should you take other
turns into hills, open your eyes & see
little dots of light so plenty they pass
for small, scattered suns; should you
understand this – spins, like dancing,
can be coined – nights will come done.
Deciduous Petal
for Ernest
I have been told feet do the same
for soles – the way you hold concern
for me, knowing the genderless lines
in which we stitched through each other
isn’t seamless. this is you – pattern &
colour in every tile. of all springs you alone
don’t fall. know this – the way stars do
clouds that let them shine through – sway your hips to every pulse of the heart, tie
scarves & love the world with your every
moving part. I call you the way autumn
call deciduous petals – you define seasons.
& know this – no soul carved out bodies
to be named into, they just loved, like you.
deviance
laid on fabric is a stranded hair
of her boy. she will not cremate this
soul. she will not eject it the way her
womb did her boy – you don’t belong
inside this vagina. he was safe
being her outgrowth, but this earth
of hanging tendrils & branches wrote
his will: don’t remember me old
her eyes is globe & her son doesn’t shine
nights plague him with cold feet & she can’t
tuck it away. he is crescent now. she will be
sand – she will learn that dark smokes
are the dead’s way of soaring & race through
worlds; his light will stroke her again.
