ENTER

She’s hoarding hope in her halo, vertical

with want when summer dusk leans off to sleep. 

One cloud a mask, another a wedding veil.

To keep you safe, Cloud whispers, climbing upwards,

wind lifting her skirt. Togetherness seeking 

shade under olive trees by the dry stream.

º

Flies scour the air with wings, carving a bowl

to measure heat, its hermitage. His horse’s

organs dried without knowing resurrection.

Only hurt of human speed — how it pollutes 

leaves. Moon alone seeks soliloquy in trees.

Tonight, there’ll be his blood to warm her cheeks:

MOON

« I’m allowed to harvest my desire. Then

what, if I have at him? I wrap his hairs

around my rays, my nail-feathered curves grazing

his neck, clean gauze over wound. Beat on

that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp

dart of longing love. Weep for my loneliness

in heaven’s necrosis, trapped in the orbits

of Gravity’s reins and neighs. How he rules 

and rules, old dictator, dragging his heels 

through Galaxy’s dim stage. There is no

escaping him, his age or closing door.

I gather men’s bodies with the last rites

of my tides. With lack I mirror their sick

hearts and veins, kiss eyes closed sans tongue to lick

the stamps. Here, here. What’s Afterlife’s new address —

now Earth’s far fallen, where to send their gaze. 

I want to find ways to say what I need.

A spider’s leg that weaves new corners in

Ophiuchus, who hides the sins that froth 

from the Earth’s tilt backwards. I’ll say. I’d like

to stare at his eyes forever, but I know

they’ll be missed at my feet. ¡I’ll say! Let me 

send them to Starlight, scatter hope in shape

of a hoof, corpse-rouge on my brother Sun’s

cheeks. As full as him I’ll lie down this time, gripping

wrists of Darkness, my bedpost, my vow, halo’s

edge where I conjure no-mores with a Hello. »

, THE MYSTIC

It must always be in this cloud, this darkness; 

only by love he can be grasped and held.

When the end of the world blooms in hearts

and children’s veins have eroded to air,

Virgo’s work of egg sacs begins to hatch

within Night’s folds. Universe is cold sweat

in Moon’s sheets, a creased pillowcase of planets’

jasmine. ‘I’m not so afar I won’t catch

the illness of airborne light. From the stars

I shiver — height being my lung.’ She casts

long shadows, an ossuary, an eclipse

of before and after in the clock’s hands.