By the sextant of her hips

She Comes Out Of The Sea
For Marlene

She comes out of the sea, brinesalt and sweat,
tides wrapped about her in kelping bands that
snug her muscles from an hour of paddling.

She may have oared in from Papeete bearing
water from the basket of her broad shoulders,
stranged by the fruit of a smile you barely know.



So you watch her step from the sleek hull, her
form navigable by deliberate observation, pick
her out from the others by the sextant of her hips.

She trods sand negotiating new treaties with gravity,
unaware that your eyes confer Magellanic latitudes
you would cross an ocean to tenderly circumtrek.

This is the prodigal siren come ashore from her
home in the sea, to assuage all that want her for
her ways, for their own, for her tidal enchantment.

Joseph Gallo
June 18, 2009

Mouths that break and open

Turning Koi
For Marlene

We hold and sway together in the doorway, the Earth
counterbalancing each lilt and tilt, left and right. This
could be fragrant island rain or a white moth dusting in
through moonsheer panes of an early June, your breasts
stirring the fine hairs on my chest like turning koi as we
creak wood and kneejoints that have seen seasons
more spry than we have need to conjure or recount.

We are here, this way, now. Together is a point on a star
map that says You Are Here And Here And Here. The fluid
core of a planet emits liquid magnetism, surrounds us in
an iron knuckle that presses us closer together than
gravity alone can account for. So we stay that way and
sway, sway, slowly sway. These are the moments that
outlive us because they give purpose to the all of this.



Ghosts knock on other doors this night and leave us to
haunt ourselves with a sheetless incarnate knowledge.
And the world falls away like a bridal dress at the threshold
of consummation, a careless shoe kicked backward across
the floor to wedge beneath the armoire, the foot traded for
finned wings and nimble kisses, glass mouths that break and
open to all the possible courses they abandon safer water for.

Joseph Gallo
June 8, 2009