Outlines

          Sucking the sky’s leather to a pulp,—

Memory’s patchwork in the skin fades,

We string our throats to cotton

And lie our mother’s sword in a grave,

Open-mouthed for the digger’s cross-legged scalp,

Trying like gnats to forge a miracle from all fruit’s rotten.

           Our hands cupped in the wind, —

We return like larks to the humming avenue

Lined with winter flesh and black mayflowers;

Unlocking the vaults ribbed in the clouds to dew,

Arriving like bat-winged eskimos to find

Girls skating breathless on Ocean towers.

            Here the leaves stroke the fiery throat, —

Here like a paw I drove you desolate,

Left you crackling in a charcoal square.

The voices cover you as they plumage the air,

Your glum paralysis stiffens the coat

And like shorts on a chair we let the clock set.