The Perfume In Turning Water
It give of its names to the seasons
like they was its own
It painted its own face on the bank
It laughed It ate the locust
It got down It prayed
to the locust
They washed in pomade
the dead sovereigns
They cut the painted
chambers The Limestone
the color of gnashing teeth
The weather pissed down
heat, pissed shine on
the naked blood plane
after the bustup in The locals and their kin
The bleachred The color of rust
They mix pigment in hand
howlin songs
Who cleans all this off
like when dusk
slips again, busts an ankle
Who bends their back to gather
pieces
like grain
Say when, motherfucker
said in the dry
face of the chimera,
to the jewels, to the wasted balm
Thing had a body
like the paper nest
of a yellow jacket
come down from the eaves
This directly before the fire
collected em
The both of em
How the walls
they blistered with engravings
And in them the mouths
of the prophets lay open
like gates
like it was laughter
did em
I, the god of the
fucking Sun, have known
of a pox and I drank of it
The order that feeds
the current the red
scent blossom
The breaks cresting
as the jaw of the coyote
Have I laid
in its breast
“Cousin”
“Yes”
When you said
notta one knows
a desert’s caught fire
in the high of the day
I lied to you
I nod with
my neck
and before we come to this,
before they cut the quarry in
Cousin,
this was the plain deep
ocean
Gemini
Our hand did not lay half the peppertree
In bermudagrass We were away then, neither was it rot
The good neighbor will say the wind come
Like, could it take anything
And leave clean lines in the flesh
Of anything How I refuse to believe anything
In my own time What lights on the flush clearing
Will lay a share open-jaw
Does a neighbor hear the wind in Fall?
By his lonesome Yeah, Jack He said Fuck You too
Ginny, Late April
So will rain lay the floor
cut and the clay mud open Sing
all the hellmouth to pass this
way, in places Lo she put her
face and palms on the wet cypress
planks that do hold the yard
to a half acre for The Woman
may come again like the wraiths
Sayers of nothin — Wonder
what all she eats I wonder
that she gets enough to eat Hello
Hello, M’am at nothin, the kildeer
Not on this day May she come
again to her garden for quiet I
will have the manners to say hello,
I swear it She left the fence,
tore ass on the yard’s high edge
and inward to a new lake Her ankle
laid blooms on the face of it
with glass in the mouth She sat
in water to look the high window
Say hand to God on the blood of our
feet Say cover y’mouth How with this weather
Mother got a ringin in Her ears
Curate, Water
The wash, a mess of
Thick bloodcolor fabrics on
A line Given to
Wind, to this cold light
Have I washed the small feet of
A dying woman
Into the mirror
Bowl Chase the light and filth
Behind, as through grain
Kay is a writer and educator in South Texas who just can’t stop thinkin about sleep and coyotes. His writing can be found in Strange Horizons, Brazos River Review, Deep South Magazine, Scalawag Magazine, and Menacing Hedge.