Sun God
these green suburbs’ deep roots will drown with thirst
they will flood with birdsong rising up like blood
in choked throats / they may sing but it
will kill them leaving only song.
even now i have not / so many years
later even lacking memory of that time
even now i have not escaped that cult
Of execution / defeated.
at the bus stop eyes still dim anticipating
labouring exhaust a single feather
loosened from road kill rises floats
and falls softly to the curb in silence.
a face before me burnt into the seat
in front affronts my chapped lips
my hair greased with sweat by /
a sun indeterminate in her orbit
graze the back of my neck with fire
you have you painted love bites
on your untouched neck? those bruises shine
/// with the clearest edges i have ever seen.
for Tede Matthews
(to enter the river / to swim / is not / to cross / cut)
i. to drown
like slipping something through the eye of a needle
something something pushing pushing wriggling
in my hand growing round and flesh and flush
with anticipation. in the shower i hear footsteps
on the stairs. why don’t you touch me here anymore?
what does that needle i see that eye do not?
ii. to name a desire;
i have given up on fasting
i never wanted to be thin, i wanted
to be an angel. their whiteness was too dazzling
dizzying dismay dentata’d vaginas
tear and slash and weep in joyous fury
amazons with mirrored genitals refracting suns
sell their own rituals and steal others
never meeting eyes except in reflections
dazzling dizzying dismay beyond words
but only love and war unname
iii. only war
cut across the clinic and the assembly
line across the crowd the mass and the fucking
march from a to fucking b / cut like a
border or a front, lacking all surgical precision
no more waiting like monks to be taught
by cells not of our own trembling skin / cut
of a line // uncut.