Gabriel Gadfly's Blog, page 22

Monster

You spread dry monsters on the pale flowers:

cracked tentacles, calcified fangs, horns

and hides and pelts of hounds of hell and

Artemisian golden hinds, lined up beside

blinded cooling cyclops;

Viper-tressed gorgons beheaded

and bagged, Scylla’s necks dragged out

of her crags and splayed against sprays

of heather and thyme, junebugs lapping

the sea-salt slime still damp on her teeth.

Herculean thief, even wildflower dusk

won’t mourn the husks you’ve laid out

against sprays of heather and thyme.

The post Monster appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Merchantman

She places her hand on the table,

fingers splayed, and I am tracing

the shape of her hand with

my fingertip, as if it were a merchantman

navigating the harbors and bays

of a peninsular quintet:

where shall I berth? The cape of her

index, the horn of her thumb, the

shore of her slender wrist?

I am a lost captain wandering

from one ivory cliff-shelf to the next.

The post Merchantman appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Lupercalia

This is our first kiss as I remember it:

I squeeze the wool sponge and trickles

of milk, steaming white brooks,

pour over you, spill into the bright seas of

goat-kid’s blood smeared on your breast.

My thighs and my belly burn at your touch,

I wash you; you wander me.

My skin craves to be wandered.

My hand is yours: you wind the februum,

the strip of flesh the goat has given us,

the strip of flesh my thighs and belly are

striped and stung from, you wind it

and wind it about my wrist and your wrist

until I can have no thought of pulling away:

you have made me yours to wander.

My skin craves your wandering.

My skin craves to wander you.

Your tongue is in my mouth.

We are milk and we are blood.

The post Lupercalia appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Life Support

A heart cannot pull away from its veins.

At the corridor’s end, one step shy of snapping

the arteries that bind me to you, I turn and flee

to your bedside, my fearful heart beating its fists

on the white doors of your room, as if it might find

them locked and barred, but they open, they

still accept me, you still sleep, dreaming to the

hushing lullabies of your respirator.

Your hand is warm and I imagine your fingers curl,

just a little, around mine.

I’ll stay here until you wake up.

I’ll stay here until you wake up.

The post Life Support appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Ladybugs

In July, we danced

so we would not

crush them.

They were everywhere:

on handbags and strollers,

signposts and mailboxes,

the hats of old men

and the benches the

old men sat on.

You scooped them

in thousands off

windowsills.

Your small hand

full of speckled jewels.

The post Ladybugs appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Kudzu

A survey of conquered lands:

fifteen telephone poles, three

valleys, and the wire skeleton

of a fence line an acre back

from the curve of the porch.

Seven feet a week, when the

weather’s right: humid enough

for the vines to suckle water

right out the August air. Drought

can’t kill it, just makes it sleep,

twisted, drying in the Alabama sun,

until the clouds give back the rain,

and its endless gnawing march resumes.

Burn it if you like:

set fire to the vines and watch

flames curl up hillsides like

shedding leg hair with a match,

but all that does it make it

a little more eager to sprout.

Here’s a secret to keep your head

afloat under the encroaching tide:

kudzu’s worst nightmare — a pair of

small white goats.

The post Kudzu appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Heirlooms

Before I let you read this poem,

I will cut it into tiny strips,

wrap them around apple seeds,

and I will plant them in

           long parallel rows

two

           long parallel rows

so that, years from now,

when our children are grown,

you and I will be able to

hobble down a corridor of trees

and watch our grandchildren

eat crisp red love poems

that have fallen onto leaves.

The post Heirlooms appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Archipelago

The tiny freckles

clustered on your collar bone

are just six

of the reasons

my lips keep

seeking you.

The post Archipelago appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

The Gulf

You are sleeping when I come home.

The cat stirs from her nest,

butts her head against my ankle,

her motorboat purr the loudest sound

in this sleeping house.

The bedroom door always creaks

and I hope it will not wake you,

even though I know by now

that when I strip off my clothes

and crawl into bed beside you,

you will stir. A murmured hello

in the dark, fingers finding a hand

in the dark.

When I wake, you are gone.

We converse in notes and memos.

A scrawled poem, the sketch of a heart,

sticky-note I Love You taped to

a laptop cover, to the bottom of

a bowl of keys, artifacts traversing

the gulf between our waking hours.

The post The Gulf appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Intensive Care

Around midnight,

I held your fragile breath

cupped in my hand

until the radio’s heartbeat

stopped.

White noise echoed

the rattle and hiss

of respiratory

machinery

lifting your lungs

in the white walls of this cell.

Together,

we watched light fracture

in bags of chemical sustenance:

antiseptic rainbows

dripping from the ceiling

to your arm.

The post Intensive Care appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.