Saturday, June 27, 2009

By the sextant of her hips

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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.

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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


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Monday, June 15, 2009

Mouths that break and open

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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.


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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