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