ornament as disguise
I snowed for years.
You swallowed hope, the crooked-fingered star—
The light never went out of my belly—
You snowed for years.
—
Sails, bunched in the harbor, blooming and contracting
like a slovenly heart,
all seventeen in an unruly mass, some
trying to pull away—
You wouldn’t feel your loss—
You made it art, the beautiful object, tears, waste
and the diamond in it, you said
he left me, he left me, like geese on the fly
hands fat with ether—
saw through your grief the boats on the lake and said
the sails are white knives crossing over the water,
they slice and re-slice the sky.
Clicking too shut jeweled Jewelry Box
with your How Sequinned, How Pre-Raphaelite
boats so much brighter on the water
than knives you imagined, white knives you imagined, not
lamp, sun, on the white of the sail
men unmooring their aluminum music
how bright quick sharp sun came they came
fast diamonds running on the blue-dark lake—
I snowed for years
in your spine there are boats—
I swallowed hope
a sail, to be lifted—
I sold it for a crown
to rush brightly in music—
I sold it for a barge
on the hand of one sailor—
Isolato with a crown
at the helm: Heart’s Desire—
Isolato with a barge
the clay of you dumb at the rail at the prow,
foraging for ornamental forms—
by Isolato, I am engorged. |
