self-timer
Subject matter: self, at a teetering age.
Self, in skinny furs, enamel brooch slipping off
sagging blouse, an avalanche. Self asks self,
are you okay. There is no need to be.
Harnessed clutch of hair, trailing over shoulder
as a bundled animal. Self is ruptured open
by the cold. Confused lambs die in the dark,
petrified in snow. Little stiff blankets,
the next day they are piled high.
Analysis of a dream: self struggles
to suppress your ghost.
vinzel
September glimpsed
through the open back of my black dress
unbuttoned, strung up
by a single wire hanger
the homemade abortionists’ kind
there’s noise through the balcony doors
city cars, in country lanes
passing the pregnant vines
with their fat roe clustered
in the lower branches,
I’ve seen nothing yet
for such a deflowered traveller
my clothes still smelling of Rome
the sweet damp dust, on everything
and my suitcase life
spread out on another foreign floor
I catch French conversation
car starts up and leaves the drive
with places to go, out of my life
much the same as I
left time and again
breath held and eyes slow
through a plane window,
at each city’s lights
rested on their black beds
all my mythology shattered
about otherness and distance,
because even you
are still in the world.