across the river

(for Tala & for those who know the calendar of bedlife.)

​

 

the body, the island bed

the droll of days stranded, bones calling out

for signs of life,

met by the muted loneliness of the city’s chaos

the metaphysics of a desert, solitary citizen

on planet bed, in bedcountry, attic of illness

(we are the secrets)

 

nightmare throb us ground our teeth to sand

kleenex like tumbleweed, pill bottles emptying their guts,

crumbs in parade, a marching band of echoes

 

ghost of other days curled in the sheets, remember?

that infinite drumming of her hand inside you

big bang, cosmological theories in your ear

galaxies born in the molecules of your breath

your exhale, your many yesses (anchor yourself there)

 

the worn & trailed question of whether we still exist

in the string of forfeited days, weeks blurring

together, whether, if we speak

to the moon, she will cast our message

her mouth like a pelican, fish full

& deliver us to each other

across these two rivers

that some days might as well be

the wide Sargasso

 

I have wondered

 

if, in another universe, parallel

somewhere, we

are lovers, gall & gale in our ferocious hair

dreams at the helm

masts full of tomorrow maybes

we feast on the wind, belly rolls in tides

chanty melodies lapping at the stern,

hearts spry beneath the sternum

 

if there is a world, in which

we are sisters

converting sea salt to gold

by the song in our mouths

& gold to bread, memory

 

in which we are

stags in a wood

guarding the nethergate in the dawn shift

stern, resolute,

hungry for morning supper

for news of spring & next year’s aplomb

a plum’s flesh for the tongue

 

(are you also a shapeshifter? Was that you flying, surprised by my glass window?)

 

the body, the island bed,

loneliest planets, we living

like Jupiter & Neptune

orbiting the sun, ships in the night

 

I crave the stillness/the stillness eats me.

 

not nine miles between us,

a sargassum tangle

sweetbriar patch cutting me, I swim

 

I swim I swim I swim

 

we sick know

body is but one universe

body is a fiction

to which we are bound

body is land

ship wrecked

we know

these maladies, viruses, courted by the body

that affliction is diasporic too

 

I see you across the river, shine

in your iris, face to the sun:

I see you torque immobile,

willowy meadow of swollen joints

 

the water fettles us, vessels, we

tired bodies, beacons on the shore

lighthouses, we steer the lost

out the jaggedness of high-tide shoals

we are a constellation, a hundred million beds

across a continent, gleaming alight the watery road.