Hymn
I want to stop taking drugs
for granted. Desire makes me
serious. I keep busy by looking
for the center. Squirrel tail:
blue slivers cohere around a wire.
The burning between my back
and sternum. How we wake
in pairs. In Paris, I made
a nest in the idea of you.
You read aloud in a language
I could not understand. You made
sense without me. In the absence
of pure translation, pure sentences.
We cannot know. We shed our coats.
We measure the sun against
our watches, wanting seconds
back from the dark. I touch your cheek
to mark the picture in my head I make.
We fall asleep just long enough to dream
in private fear, so thoroughly ours.
Italicized text from Henri Michaux, “Miserable Miracle” (Addenda III, p.176)
Sonnet of Tropical Excess
Woke and vacuumed. Took damp clothes
off the line for the coming storm. Living
with the shore at your door is constant
war. No use wiping salt off the counter:
there’s more. Sand in every filter. All my books
are warped. My hair sticks to itself every morning.
I dreamed of coming back here for five years.
I arrived and remembered the rainy season:
how it renders beaches mean and crushing.
Can our selves across time warn? I know mine can
lure– younger, I desired this island so strongly
I carved a path that stayed clear for years.
Even earlier, islandless, I was in love.
I still don’t know what I wanted more of.