Proxima

This, precious demon, is how you caught me

the sweetest pricks

the pinching of strings

lamps slanting their ivory outpour

across polished brazil nut skin

reflecting a line like a frozen finger

of lightning

the artist’s finger

on the warbling string

a bottom lip

quivering

no matter how softly

she strokes the violin

there is not a sound

the walls don’t hear

the keening

of your hopeless, stranded

melody

a river for my ears striking me

where I stood

carrying the bundle

of me into new years

where the sweetness of you

cradles me

through yet another century

of longing to be

near the gaping mouth

of that hourglass body

from which the hum

of exquisite perplexity

sighs through me

oh cracking melody

I can’t even move

while you torment me

so gingerly

so precisely

the sweep of a thumb

along the bass’s strings

a pulsing

in my paralyzed neck

oh, how I want to be

caught in your ripening eternity

tell me what to be

tell me, because I have forgotten

I am me

pluck me

along the sharpening

of your soprano legato

where I long to be the strings

the bow strokes

so keenly

teach me to be air

and you will see how I can sing

when underwater

and still breathing

the perfume

into which you refine me

your story will never leave

twisting me, pulling

me into the glossy conch shells

your eyes are becoming

where I am spiraling

I flail but the railing

too is flying

away into the bubbly

sky

the moon a raspberry

in this honey-spilled

sea

of awakening

and like the sea

you smell like something

heavy and breathing

like the sea, you drench me

with tugging and pressing

but starting from my mind

and only then

dampening down

toward sand-mired feet

I am crooked

in the slanted sliding of

your uneasy embrace

where you kiss me gently like a truck

wrapping around the tree

after leaning

across the twin yellow snakes

your arms are the roots

of my fire

your legs the sapphire branches

of thrumming dragon

fly wings

you are cedar on the tongue

of poetic intrigue

and if anything

like my own creativity

you swelled and aged

into everything your mother hoped

you would never be

but I love the very taste

of your daring

ingenuity

do you feel these inverted peaks

of harmony?

this is how your bass

will slam through me

stretched frequencies

draping our shapes

and humming through us

like bees

like sunlight in a jar

you are trapped

so long as I do not move

like sunlight you are slippery

as I fall forward into this dream

you fall with me

what I’m trying to tell you is

you struck all the right chords in me

there was no flower, there were no bees

yet still you made honey from me

this glass crystallizing in the corners

of my eyes mean I fear

I may never

hear you again

This poem was published by La Piccioletta Barca, February 2020