I didn’t ask
whether it’s alright
If, atop the whale’s back
I can keep you here
And strip you of the aftermath
The eagles were eating their hunt
Two bleached trunks convening
nubs looking forward-
Benches around an erratic giant
Smooth, and millions of years!
Of angry and alone
As in wheelies in your father’s car
Angrily at night, when the ice is
Thawing with painful protraction
Your body revealed
Your body a crater
Your body a boulder
Your body a bolder version of –
Your body the very picture of –
Summer, millions of years
Ago the South Pacific yawned
Gravel grating
A mmmillion days so that I can
Rub my thumbs on the assailant
Isn’t she a
Child of angry glaciers?
Our cold and dirty grandmother,
Who formed the world
Embossed her under foot
and a porous body for us to
Dribble out from
She knows what a trillion years is:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Trillion
Trypophobics tumble over this
Sssomatic earth, aware of
Exfoliating my ass, home to
Nine gazillion barnacles
Cutting pink flowers into flesh
Imagine
The picture of
A truly awaited prickly embrace
Like when the starfish came back
Plague survivors clinging
Purple and slowly snapping
Their underbelly mouths shut
They’re stronger than ever
Together or alone
They’ll procreate
I imagined how it would start
Hand on thigh
Food for later
No,
Nose to nose
I’ll hungrily anticipate how your skin feels
It’s so warm and I’ve waited so long
To scratch your itch
I want to describe a kiss
I wanted to show you my best one
Tasty oxygen emits
Like apocrine glands
Stroking this excretory duct
That dribbles down hairs
Thicker when shaved an
Oily dribble percolation
I like my
Coffee with cardamom my
Soapy morning disappointment
Your eyes were shut
So I peered over your shoulder
Where garden snakes
Bump
heads and nuzzle cheeks
Horny
Unpracticed
Yes it’s totally repulsive
But over your shoulder
Keratin heard clacking
Feathers heard sweeping
This burned in my brain
Yellow talons on fishtails
Clumsy experts at
Tearing scales
That’s before I told you
I can’t stand to look at birds of prey
By which I mean fear
You were disappointed
But there are
Clumsy predators
Do not ask how
History precedes them
Millions and billions and trillions
of years, those
crazy-eyes
How could you do such a thing
For so long your
Eyebrow cocked
Saliva coursing down your chin
Why didn’t you just swim naked?
It’s as hot out as
Your tongue
Instead weakly perched bathophobic
Floating, my neck finds salt prickling
Dried to the pock-marked rocks
When I came up again
Liquid mercury slinking away
And later your best memory is of
Me wiping your glasses
Practiced since childhood
Better to see pyrite skies with
looming conflagration
Is this marrow
A sum of substance?
Blame the weather
this cadmium-sunset-weather
this sun
this cadmium sky
this cadmium sky cuts contours
Curling shapes need the sky
As if the sky is one body
Your breath thickens around my bones
Grows under calculating vines
Your flavour lost after too long
- Tomarrow was first read at Blake & Vargas (Berlin), for “A Guest List is a Love Letter“, invited by TABLOID Press, June 2019.
- Copyright © 2017 Bitsy Knox, all rights reserved.