the abstraction:

oh river, river, the highway song
hums twilight lid
over the bright eyes of the zephyrs.

the carbon cells against my wrist
burn lemon, tap wet
fingers, flickering lamp switches and buttons

the way the awakening waves
stream through the sealed panes and the walls,
leaves me crawling back to some blackness.


a translation:

river, i smell your dawn,
between the fluid melody
of cars streaming, fish on the highway

my wrist has carpal tunnel
from love vibrations and voltage leak
of electric cells caught between stiff fingers.

the way the dreaded cockcrow arrives,
the first dark blue, the moon growing old,
leaves me crawling beneath my bedding.


the poem:

river, river, i smell your dawn,
the sea starved song,
the singing of the streamlined
fish on the highway.

it silences
the motors
tunneled against my wrist,
it runs dry
the masochism,
numbs the voltage buzz in my fingers.

in the dark,
the moon grows old.
night stumbles away again,
never lullaby nor lover.

Some nights, as the starry clouded hours lay with me,
I think of those who lay their aging bodies,
unshowered and uncradled,
into the empty pocket of their machine-worn sheets,
and then of myself, spray cleansed
and coiled like electric cooling in the flat folds of my quilt
to keep my bathed body from the damp of the dew,
that soaked my linens closer to midnight.

There is a wandering in my flesh,
that keeps me from silence,
the pieced pastorals of my mind.
My organs are hungering
for hairy arms and a bed
in Brooklyn. I call my lover, apologize.
He instructs: turn off the lights, lie down, close your eyes.
 
I say: goodnight. He says: goodnight.
And as he falls 
to heavy, luscious breathing,
the static on the phone becomes steady rainwater,
glistening orange and city as it drops,
sounding steps, high and ringing in wash colored pavement.
Heavy inhales, exhales,
June rain on my thirsting skin.

For a moment,
I turned the faucet
and the water sang.
Two notes, a gurgling alto warming her chords.

Then, the flow of water aerating
down the lowly sink, down the steel holes.

Nobody loves me the way the water does.

Last night
the rain struck me
with swifts, half-liquid butterflies.
blinded, I walked onwards anyway,
and clung,
to its pebbling coldness.
then, I too, was sweet rain.
 
A splash.
It nearly kisses me,
but falls away.
I wash my face yet again.
It rinses my sweat, the oil,
but underneath, never pristine,
a dirt girl unearthed to porcelain;
I am yellow pale, a boyfaced zombie.