The Orchard

Last night I dreamed again the monkey dream

They howl through the temple

stealing fruit left for the gods

Then they run chattering through the village

How the people hate them so!

The little birds in the tree woke me

they twitter like girls, or what people think girls are like—

*

She wears a coat. She wears

animal skins. She wears a garment

woven of golden thread. She has sharp

teeth like a serpent. She is fanged,

she is horned as a dragon, she is

beautiful, she is not.

*

The perfect roundness of her arms—the classical roundness

marmoreal, but no, never cold to the touch

Her small hands, bunched fingers

like the buds of the clivia

before they open in orange flame

Her flesh, oh that flesh that I wanted to steal

with my mouth & my teeth

& hide among my clothes

*

In the partial palace I long to live with her

The ruins, the exposed foundation, the barn without a door

Inside her I leaned to live,

inside the lesser orchard, the deer’s eyes—the rain—

White Powder on a Red Plate

Polar accuracy of the widening pupil

he said you’ll look like you’re in love

his long hair davenning towards

the white powder on a red plate

Ghosts all around us whined

but only I could hear them / pitiless wind

Shape in the shadows like a noose

or a tree begging for one—

I leaned back on a leather couch, slid downwards,

my hands changeable, huge as horse hooves.

Then watched him breathe in,

shouldering the cold

I didn’t say anything, just watched & listened

white unto death/disguise

the practical guise, the well-practiced noose