She

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easy to count are hands
from these hands, fingers
from pegs that clench;

such mouths do you come from
limp as laundry lines
straggling in the air;

walls skewer me in and against a sky,
taut and trite as a moral.
all noon such layers descend on me.

nightly, they petrify into
vacant spaces on the frieze
till every morning crackles

inside you, spiteful as an egg.
a heart pokes and cooks—
fibers burn, burn

the elixir’s swerving
incandescence of bones.
trampling torch, ballerina, what

mangled jungles blaze a-
wake: faces sliding over
this spinning

masquerade—
what a sanctuary in these veils,
in this quick clap of locks,

barriers blooming into depth;
we do not communicate—
what do you do, how do you say

yet words, words perk up
busy knives, flashing
spite – eye-tip to

the next, new slice
till I am the heart, the crimson
fright that splits and flies through

toasts between these teeth:
archway of pearls, all night they
guard an abyss, mending, working

shapes beneath palms, stoic
and upturned in this casual guilt
our secret is.