h o m e........

p a s t   i s s u e s....

s u b m i s s i o n s....

l i n k s

FRANKIE DRAYUS

Metaphorically speaking we

are between a rock and a hard place.  I 
                           have never noticed until 
now how alluring rocks 
             can be; why does no one speak 
                           of a vein’s surprising color? What I might 
trace if only I could find my fingers. Or perhaps I
                           am the rock and you 
             are the hard place:  there is nothing 
between us except 
                           air.  Please stop breathing; it 
draws me closer.  I 
                           am no mountain and you 
are certainly no 
                           Mohammed and yet I 
feel holy verses
                           coming on.  If you must 
speak, speak to me 
                           in tongues –  there is something
deep in your mouth I can almost
             see –  if only we could suck
stones as Demosthenes sucked 
         stones in an effort to reach 
clarity – there is a word you
        want to say – I can almost see:
it has an edge and a color: it has blood 
              from someone’s religion: I
think it begins with
        O –

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK
 

after Peter Weir


            1.  

We fall in the afternoon     
To sleep
To gravity’s lull 
To the pull of warm rock
Blanketed in pushed heat

We dream we will not be back for tea.


            2.

            After removing our gloves
            There was no stopping us.
            No shoes.  No stockings.  Oh the scandal.


            3.

But it cut – my skin –
Against the stone and bled
And I felt my glorious skin     
                        (glorious tearing)
            (glorious blood) –
All and each, I felt them.

            I felt my hunger later
            And my need

As for my blossoming purpose
I felt the wind touch my hair
Heard a breath say
                                    You –
                        I choose
                                 You


.            4.
 
            All those clouds swirling overhead.

            We disappear around the stone corner

                        Our petals blowing like silk.

           5.
           
 We were all and we were each.
           
It is not God it is Sky
Drawing us up and up
Drawing us       drawing us       up up—
           
It is not we who haunt your dreams;
It is not the symbol of the swan;
It is you and 
           You calling 
           
                       you awake—
           
It is the site of the line you drew.
           
           And could you cross?
           
           
           6.
           
           
No one spoke of the missing corset.
           
         

            7.
           
           
 What passes through an eye
           And what may not enter
           
           We are unlacing our boundaries
           We are angelic like match-girls
           
                                      Pale handfuls of ready lucifers—
           
           
           8.
           
A book of mathematical formulae
           Clutched to her bosom
Every answer is 
           None      of the above

           9.
           
Thick wind and thrumming
Altitudes and glass
           
           
I am so cold                   / She is so cold
I am falling                     / She is falling
           
I remember nothing      / She remembers nothing
           
           
           10.
           
We are every window now
           
There is no stopping                         us—
           
We are up –
              We are             oh –
                             We are –

The second day of autumn is strangely 

damp, green: a starfish pulling in weather 
            and clinging to its desire for things 
to fall.  I miss the deciduous.  I miss
            knowing frailer things outside the bound-
arilessness of this primordial soup.  
            There used to be Time and now there is only 
endure.  Last, last, last summer, last—  It breathes 
            in the space between the mouth and lobe of 
the ear – it does not quite kiss.  It does not 
            quite whisper.  It says hot in the way only 
hot can be exhaled.  I can smell what it 
            has recently eaten.  It pushes (push)—
it says last, its opening growing wider.  
            It is the only moving thing, this dilating 
hole.  All else and I, we merely stay.  It 
            is the second day of autumn, meaning 
“A mouth parts its boundary and sighs” or
            “This soup can swallow” or “Nothing can fall 
while we thicken and open.”  Push, it says, hot—
            Even the ginkgo leaves sink down, fleshy.