" Precipitate "
She’s learnt to ignore mother
in the damp arm chair, fag
tipped over lips, spit glass
half full of bloody dark.
She’s bolted Spanish shutters
against the watcher’s coal eyes
and cheeks of burning uranium.
Infact, she wrapped the house
in black and moved into the attic
where love could be a slither
of sky, a separation between stars.
-*-
Tonight locusts pop against the skylight
and Luka is silent, the way he always is
when the sky slits open; like he knows it’s her
letting blood seep in, letting uncut nails
tailgate the heavens.
She plays innocent, pretends to read,
lets merlot slip down her throat like river snakes
whilst black lodestones blaze through her hem
to the ice beneath. She is winter
in his hands, always winter.
-*-
Heartbeat, her breath trembles
at its surface, meditates in its centre,
undulates inside clouds. She coaxes the sky
into rain, there is nothing sexier. Even he
is only the riverbed accepting her, a goddess,
his mouth an exquisite pearl.
-*-
Everything the voices promised, they gave;
the ability to raise whippets of vapor,
to push a corona of tornado using only
her mind. But now they are saying no
and she can almost see the gleam
of beetles, onyx gloss foresting
the watcher’s tongue.
Voice all around her, radiating
through bricks, the house animated
with its drawl. It speaks of hurt,
deceit, of leaving Luka, of ventricles
and arteries, how a vine
could one day slip around
and pull.
Words that will resonate
until they slide over her like a mask,
but for now she says no,
whispers no.
© 2004 Lisa Megraw
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