Red Cliffs
there are too many dead cats in Red Cliffs.
we wouldn’t raise our children here
plushed flush against their outback bones
a pregnant little x-ray
I am a pilgrim of spirit
gone walkabout in pleather
Kmart booties
five flies land
upon my arm
in an illicit
orchestrated flight
and the struck body
of a fresh-cut roo ditched
makes wildflower plucking a shudder.
love is a lazy thing
it’s why the weather changes
the plains a bowl of tepid rice water
bed’s otherside muggy
flat as a eighty kilometer
accident
skeletal on a red-earth tarmac
of licked-stamp somewheres
it’s why socks
kick blustering stridencies on the line
pegs osteoporotic
brittle with the futility of all
that they carry.
First
I cried on the airplane
all the way back to you
grit and gold
gilded and closed
hoping you'd hold me as something
other than imminent departure;
than a body built
to be sold
as a renovator's dream.
my city, kiss me like every time we quit each other.
you, like every time my veins
build tissue like drunk architects
they've forgotten sprawl and just spread themselves apart
like the legs of closeness seekers
in the bedrooms of strangers (mine)
maybe taxi cabs are violins
to the airport, my first
they're warming and waning to the rise
of something not yet happened
something as silent as medicine
and just as deadly.
Keep it. (Darling)
Whatever I offered you
it was small and made of plastic anyway
souvenir means memory
I'm a tourist of the cracks
in the pavement
of your skin
and in the morning
if I'm brave enough
I promise, this time
I'm leaving.
