Thirst


A frisson while the night passes
A maw to be filled with bloated stars

The frugalness of neon haunts your suffering
The moon frightens a stranger’s trees

Am I a ghost hiding in plain sight?
Am I a night tremor where the longboats pass?

& If I tremble, it’s only for my love of gillyflowers
That sing, in the wicked breeze of my thirst

Where I am lost, like a cataloguer in a storage room
Of pent-up desires. O cool fountains, interiority—

When do I go to sleep? & In what din
Of a grinning force, how far away is night?


Sometimes it rains here, in the penitentiary of my age
& I am baffled by goslings who have no care for frivolity

Then winter really rubs off on children’s red jackets
& I muffle my knees like a mud cowhand & stutter

In the brackish, sheet metal music of days’ slow death
Shimmering under a wreath of seas