Excerpt from Desire is a Federacy
before you if the police kill me I hope
the last thing I accomplished is making
your coffee because I like how my hands feel
that early in the morning incapable of harm
miming tender acts of weather
instead like a lightning-struck senator
the closest I’ve come
to participating in faith
was believing that lightning strike
would help my neighbors sunrise
sunflower sunset this is a day if it looks like
all the ones before carrying us
god knows where at least the dogwoods
will white and pink me perfect
like arrows some men only really see
what they’re about to kill leap high my love
and know there’s not enough guilt
in ecclesiastes to demand the hungry
attempt grace in their hunger
& what would a king blood-hemmed
and sharp-sworded know
about starving wanting the undaffodilled
field the sad mechanics of legislation
can make even out here with all our shirts
on the clothesline and our mothers
up to their elbows in the washtub
I’ve come with a petition
no one wants to sign like more
swords in lilies thunderstorms
in every quiet dream you’ll have to wake
up just to wring your hair out full
of the sweet rain smell luminous
as the lake I tend to deep in shadow
where swans dip their throats and come up
dreaming all the leaves giving in
to the wind at once all the police dropping
their handcuffs over the bridge
and for it raising the water ever so lightly
we become light ourselves I define
salvation as never having to explain debt
to a toddler drag us there and I’ll call
it home drag us away from there and
you’ve learned something about
this country the blue kings burning
an acre they could own I keep
the urn of me the downside of not being
a daisy patch is all the language I’m expected
to remember like glimmer as in
the gun glimmers and inevitably as in
I hope you’ll forgive me if I say I made a fool
of myself today inevitably
I’ll say the same thing tomorrow
 |
| Amsterdam, 11 April 2023 |
What They Love Now
The souls in my garden sing:
At noon, when light cracks through
Sea-salt to the sandy beds
And again, when midnight
Spreads the sky with stars in
A radiance that we,
Deep-water dwellers,
Can only feel
Under our skin, scales.
They sing of what they
Once loved:
Princes, their voices
Deep and resonant as
Graves,
The sun, glorious and raw—
Burning on
Flesh made for depths
And darkness.
And what they love now:
Currents that cool them,
And ask politely for dances,
Eels with eyes like coals and
Temperaments like dogs,
Their own harmonies,
Tentative, swelling,
Broken, brilliant by turns.
~ Sarah Cleto and Brittany Warner, Uncanny Magazine, 2023.
