Odalisque Aubade for Sympathetic Magic
 
From mourning to morning
 & back again
risen with a biblical sheen
cut from one cloth
organdy or better still organza
a bawdy word that spills
silken milk on the body
and the stereophonics
that speak              I am of that cloth
I am mist               a hung veil between
 us & rapture
disregard the hour's lapping tongue
name this hour gloaming
a moment between gloom & moaning
(years off from dawn)
that licks clean the bones of a she
with a dummy's shadow
 
by tender time
tenderized tender rise
which is to say: bartered
for pay foreplay
let's just say: pay it like we mean it
with rapture, with the bartered
vision of tree bark
as the faces of animals
with animals in the shape of balloons
(the balloons holding the breath
yours       the wrist     mine)
purchased with bottle-digs & treasure maps
purchased with found feathers
& Mexican flowers orange like nothing else
tangerine anger rage rind
 
passion's countdown from moaning
to mourning & back again
 
just say come to me my Odalisque
she hears:    dally with a sick doll on lease
make a Dali-esque night-day of it
oh Doll of idle hours taken for idol
she'll wear the slip between belief
& doubt's flimsy negligee
 
the faithless second
or seven lifetimes that pass
for nothing more than what they can
buy or trade
for skin: alabaster
(basted star bastard's ale)
for skin: nothing more
than a harlot for enchantment
the sympathetic magic
that eats the heart
of the brave warrior
& starves to death

she with  no reason to be here at all
a voodoo doll pierced & pained
her draped velvet walls & fainting couch
wait on the other side of town
 
somewhere between divination
& divisionlies the idea of she
and the shears that sever it.
 

 
 
Sigh Soup
 
And if being human
means nothing more
than grunts
and postures
add sighs for her.
let us make of her
what we will
from salt dough
and highways
wooden blocks
buried bottles
wax  geese
lightning  rum.
Let's extend the recipe
with flour or raisins
a dash of river
a measure of sky.
She will not reach
the hard candy stage.
She won't solidify.
You can knead her
all you want.
She will not rise.
 

 
Nest Hike Pure
 
Nonetheless the girl grew.
Robinseggblue shadow to her eyes
two feathers stretched back in her arms
and off the garage she flew or tried
and crashed but rose, (starshine, clay.)
This is the little meteorite that could
wear her mother's perfume
(anger and violets)
and her father's arrogance
(white-heat, the chenille of rented beds.)
Then there would be one that could
come down the mountain holding a tablet
made of stone and negation, that could
fold her up inside like a cocktail napkin,
scored like a paper airplane and inscribed
with a fake phone number, one who
would carry her to the top of the spiral slide
and watch her corkscrew her way down again.
One to feed her rainbow sherbet
one to send her to bed without dessert.