Wait, how does this work? A fix
I’d be an idiot to believe in
clicks full circle with zero
energy. Everyone in the hallway
at once, unease. A wrasse
with wings hovers, pearly
-dressed; I catch its nesting
scent. Command these splines
of ribs to write in this sludge of
organic sand. Negate
my stand. Solidify
oblivion, send pluming
sunward like sulphur from
an open wound in the blue
planet’s crust. I might drown
in beastkin turbulence—
scumunity—deep
depressions unmapped, if
not for the anchoring hook of these
iron hands on my sinking
shoulders—this exercise
of trust.

“…āsīrāt, waterspouts, dusky lions,
roc's horns…”

These blackened palm-frond
feathers chatter silent
tales of yore—save the roars,
too, of a troop of bearish
skuḥs, and you. “Further we are
back in the time than the Mountains
of the Moon, than those frescoes
from the days of Calypso. Come
now—the summits are crowned
in prehistory, the breezes roll
from sea to sea.”

Make your point then, āsīr,
jujube eyes seem to roll,
as the boat-boy lifts
my easel—valise—me
ashore, in the shadow of mushroom-
cloud cliffs, at the foot of a staircase
of dragon’s-blood trees.

—And snag on my
conspiratory smirk, as he
stoops again for your
case of lenses. The song of my
blood, struck up by his
touch, beats bright in both our
ears, drowning your
discordant descant:

“…fairy bats, gypsy flies, wee-
waists, Red Ensignees…”

We were well into
the minkfall zone, starhairs
raining from my grandma’s vintage coat,
novae crackling with mirrorbolt bling—me
maidenswooning in your leafjewel ear, but oh
you knew how to stand—you who


once sat down in vermilion wattle and thought you’d saw your legsprings off
to nurse the baby brother on your back,
if that blowing fabled bush of palmjambs
didn’t open their dimensions behind
the next dune—

which they did—

but on the Hawks G Camp,
where you learned to sound your
sizzlebug—take clouts—hunched
on a bonus ass while the Loot
tackled Bakayina in the bulrushes—

but not the hangtype
to call the frypipe, you
escaped—put down
near Cornet Mount—live ‬
bagal overnight—& now ‬

my karakul hat, my secret
deer—my wonderlot—milkspout
of my own nappur—your

barchan back warms my hands
as I grit to the soft raingates
opened in the window off
Clarice Hare
the fire escape, and our twin
deathcoasterloops delap,
expire—

hearing only the resonant
tones—our drizzle, our
drowse—not for miles
or tides, not for
mules—almost

dismissed, but huddled in
your saving shade, still shivering from
my crocodilemouth escape out of
my murdercoat, my motherofpearlfringed
centurydress (for which I overpaid),
my floral tiara floorcrumpled, a
pretense dissuaged.