Time drips past the gypsy children
pooling around painted toenails
peeking out of open-toe shoes
and alligator leather.
It drools-out the corner
of the municipal buildings
thick, full of secrets. Greedy,
invisible, eater of worlds.
Like skin, it wears thin
over itself.
Starved for the warmth of sun, language,
dirt, diction, and an economy rich like words.
Up the arm, the curve of necks and furrowed brows
with images that will stick in teeth like steak.
One word in front of another, snapshot.
Stop.
I feel yours lock on mine as if I were back
in the dim light of the bedroom, my heart drops
for a moment, chills feather through my hips
your hands were just there — right there.
It gets me every time. I play the mental recording
over and over. Believing that you are thinking about that look
last night, on any night — pretending you are sending me
sympathetic messages through my nervous system to bring me back there.
But you are at home minding children, and I am driving — still —
You only draw, you only do
obtuse, hard lines
where I, I have danced like a fog.
Now twenty years, cracked and tight,
daring to string a fact to glue.
Darling, I have no more to give to you.
You did it before my time —
Buddha heavy, the smell of man,
of chant, echoed out of you.
You were an arm that reached over generations
pouring spoonfuls of words over
black fedoras and snapping fingers.
They all wanted to be with you.
Swa ha.
In your gravel voice, you carried them.
Pulling, bending, to catch an eye,
once stripping your clothes off
as you enlightened the man that
wanted to know "Nakedness,"
wanted to know how, naked poems
would do, drunkenness,
drunk on the words, from you.
Trying to capture you…you only do.
Eyes filled, as if swimming to the surface.
Trying to keep your structure still
keep the quake of your ribs from shattering
my strength. One more swell
crashes over you and spills into me.
Holding onto the volcano
in you. Nothing we can do,
I tell you over again. Those eyes
full of wisdom, blue and watery,
swimming on the hope that
there might be a way
to make it better.
A long litany of elements
figured into:
wake
rise
dress
eat
drive
work
drive
eat
work
drive
eat
talk
bathe
sleep
breathe
enough to keep
from forming frosty circles
of days that we repeat.
Graffiti breath
rising through conversation.
If the auction
of my thoughts
will sell, it will be:
99% lies —
1% selfish reason.
Just warm enough
to keep
frustration
belief
acceptance
love
compromise
laughter
faith
justification
complication
sweet on the shelf.
Ivy's work has appeared in journals nationally, and anthologized. Her first book Any Other Branch, will be available through Salmon Poetry of Ireland in March 2012. Her second book, Elemental, will be out with Salmon Poetry in 2014. She is the editor and founder of Organs of Vision and Speech Magazine. For more about Ivy visit,www.poeticentanglement.com.
ISSUE:
S P R I N G
2012
NOVEL EXCERPT:
ALLIGATOR POND
by G.L. Williams
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