Archive
Rustle
Are you Monarch or moth
or some manner of the Ten
Thousand Things?
First, you light my hair
azure against black, my ladies
hushed and gasping as you breathe
your wings open and closed.
Another, midnight sky caught
where my robes brush the floor.
Their chatter dies with the two
perched — one on each wrist — pieces of summer
sky between swiftly swimming clouds.
I reach down, nothing moving
but the steady winking of your blue
wings, and tug undone my obi.
Silk after silk kimono
flare out, loose, edges lining
my bare breasts, pelvis, inner thigh
in the moonlight. One gentle shrug
and they all fall to the floor.
In handfuls of color you cover
me, midnight at my ankle, cold
dawn my crown, shallow ocean
cupping curve to curve to curve.
Small bodies, thin filaments of sky
and sea, hold such heat!
I turn in wonder, the small gusts
brushing my skin, raise my right wrist
to cover my mouth to laugh with joy,
when I hear you singing.
This is the chrysanthemum sound
I keep with me as you lift
in a single motion, as I pool naked
on my side on the floor, as ten years
pass in this forgotten palace wing until
my hair is cut to tonsure and I serve
the Buddha, this the one song on his lips,
never again having seen the face of my Prince.
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
Syllables of Drought
It was a wetter Africa you knew,
ancient giraffe —
more greenery, the sky a wider blue,
your longer horns more often used —
when your full size was less than half
today’s. The climate changed; you grew.
More than the tongue, the spots, your neck
is what your name has come to mean. When said,
the sounds stretch out, long As from Arabic,
the hissing, slurring F which spreads
just like your neck in centuries of drought.
And if your paradise returned, would you
revert? For language takes safaris, too:
a wetter word, you’re shortened to a shout.
Written by Mary Alexandra Agner of Pantoums and Persistence.
qarrtsiluni 