The Blue Foxes
The sun could rise a little quicker rise (through the tangled spine of the vine limbs shorn
the leaves of disease shaking)—a little quicker
blessèd wings beating breaks (believable) lightning-like chases (and yours of me?)
stages of aphid/green pools dissolving in my window’s black metal frame it re-fills blue
(theme-ish lab-ish) blue Mediterranean blue
still it mimics an aquarium and two sparrows do return
diving from one thick sawed-off stump of the azalea only to hop to another
but they aren’t trying very hard allowing the now unobscured quick shifts of air to reshape
those waves—wings too quickly flying on (sky signs) splat of sun
(feathery sky signs cobwebbing rays apertures in the same frame I’ve prayed into
refracting collapsing (even now I am
not humbled)
I see myself carried through: a breezy tenor along silken avenues
someone looking like me a window frame blearing her side (con/refiguring freight)
—lake
*
Charles did you ever make love to take someone away from themselves?
from the one thing—a grief or sorrow say a shame—they could not give themselves to
because it gave always so much of itself—
to be before beneath it inside you to make it different breathing the before (my breath)
exploring unweathering whatever was hurting them and is still
*
well I didn’t not once did it occur to me… Principle…Prima Ballerina…
“what gives receives”—the mailman said so—(shame
anger) I think now it is how I will always make love to anger to your body yes
but to come between what you did to me what’s happening to me and what it’s doing
to you—there are too many personalities in that to bite flesh I remember simply skin
*
but love love I don’t know—I could make love to you now
and all the other (I have to believe) would fall away otherwise how cruel could I be
all these months trying to persuade you come back to me I believe I do
(enough?) make me Feel Respond I am different changed now
I promise—my face is small (moonlit/starlit/portal of opera-pale skin) with what I’ve
become
it’s where I’ll remain (my face)—shepherd-lanterning the willy-nilly of my remains
—that you say I might with the light-skipping current of my arms turn the shore of yours
and pull you closer
then I (alone) might know you knowing my discreet touch guiding without ever turning to see
—the heralding moon lies (my face strays with undoing)—moonlit dustlit portal of black birds
uncatchable as the quirky arm’s casting-staff— river of body
*
(a detail)
it feels like rapture then it feels …
nothing but color seeping from every sight lied to was my body limned among
bright poppies and raffaloes of light thin hand-printed papers & you shielding the sun
as my eyes burst clear blue into being you’d already disappeared the sky overhead
vast
*
whispers echoing in white marble spaces “she nearly exists” (is it here?) a stiletto
your video zeroing in on the exposed silver the thorny high-heel ticking of some citizen
understudy?
silver “breathing—she’s alive nearly…” —stiletto screwing
(stigmata) my slipper
wine marbling white walls—shades/beyond
a feeling of falling you imagine spreading my thighs in the waves of white
my back rising again moaning towards you the audience itself like elderly Roman
women at Mass rising stiffly their palms uplifted pressing back the pitch of black—
snow radiating from the palms of the priest
*
could you really know yet alone strangers? because I am now free
of the foliate azalea’s stain visible (a claret day through cranberry night) and I am now…
I should like to be engulfed —so suspendible believable (available)—you see
*
and their eyes are catching yellow but each pair of my cedar blue foxes I’m separating
with the polestar strike of my scissors guiding them to opposing points
on the white walls swelling and
dizzying
with flurries of snow from my own vertigo
they file back into their single photo-frame of WE are a pact
are again the unmoving and unobservant—I observe them though the yellow of their eyes
(I see now) says otherwise if I could lead them I might now walk out onto the water
*
they did not need to know more than facsimile—that would be instinct
*
and it’s not me you love is it or is it?
convince me Charles convince me you love me (only then will I help you)
really like before exactly
your tongue dropping the 1/2 inch from my belly button to the diagonal
hues of rose hemming in the camillia-shaped scar
—carving in shades softer than petals—if you could then
yes field your (art) refugees within me as within a race from darkness winding
through the early hills you once loved—those outlines of darkening declensions—but you could
seek us out then—taking the whole basket we’d once picked to describe the virtues over
strawberries
each one delicately bleeding off my tongue—could you?
well these are not arguments for me not exactly or precisely
My Dear your lips are apples or those burgundy berries we picked late last fall
*
—and what of the breath we did not achieve? too long too short the lives refracting
refuse all the shadows of her shape
—and my shape?
*
blowsy poppy in late day light if I look hard where the lines go light
red silk an overlay of organza raspy at the material (witness)
an old lady in the outer room (the nurse’s mother?—she spinning laughter)
the chatty anger (nearly yours) of the lived-too-long-on-this-earth for some young woman’s
undelivered duties and cigarettes—that I wish I could see (is it why she keeps returning?)
in this mirror smoke blooms and cascades where I thought light was—the last folds of the
hem streaming
hair long-flowing—all the dress in the drapes I mean
*
My dearest changeable is it? have you?
your mind is it turning you back
through the cedar shadows? your car lights—lashes tilting the high beams—lashes letting
go
—how many for the unseasonable snows swirling my body
*
—I chill grow adamant (the body’s waking in the spectral stage’s thrown lights) my opening—covetous
my anger (my body weeping desire) and …you…you? how long until the shadows
pillow the camellia-shaped scar softer melting to amber off my nipples
the moist the tart the seeds (so exact) you will love me light—
the petals shaking light no longer shake without season bereft
I don’t know how to close what’s opened —you asked
what came first?—that gown—optimism—anticipatory visits from our troupe—
pure white and yellow roses—extravagance for hope and healing
—small cursive—wildflowers inkings of my understudy successor and sorry
freesia “console-me” sunflowers “endure-me” mums the “last-me’s”
unrecognizable
for the expectations time’s departing with while the limbs cannot
*
(the bouquet today—an orchestra of breaths bursting
the skirts of an untuned ensemble…)
yours—the stiff muggy jasmine claims the air like smoke lingering from an unattended pipe
…of all I had
known & will be—they’re turning (the petals) if not back then… and I am returning them to you
*
in the violet light of dawn my own lap smears with watery linen from the slicked catalogue
we once flipped through
elegant (tireless wind-tapped pages) too long your fingers arguing
linnets shirring beneath your palmed-sky—cross-stitched birds in currents of blue linen
I did it for what sang
currents of rising—your blonde bones made pliable in thin fingers arching down
like bamboo bridges
over the swiftly rising flat—I did it (I believe/I could) in the shirred wind
of the next moment (linnets releasing) for the song of your fingers splintering the pages
they don’t ever come to life now they come to life in the pine needles blown
dancing the wind seeking my window before settling a proscenium of burnt soldiers
on the sill will you love me
so exactly
(then) did they
then the orchids then the mourning then the breeze of one’s own unexpected departure