A woman is never still

At one time,

if my nails had been painted

this shade of rose-foam in Kabul

they would have rammed

out the frosted shell

like the tarp off

a bud’s wet belly,

they would have gouged out

each shining beast,

viscera still shiny,

each glittering pore

still insane

with breath

The pain is meant

to shame me back to the realm

of several whitenesses,

they want to chew off

the cicatrix and lodge the

septic cadaver

into a further gorge where frisks

of neon riot in aporia,

where the humility

of the body is turned to iron

The shame is a

figure with an axe

climbing a voluting staircase,

it runs the speeding drams

with agility

from the hard pallet of the

radius to the soft roofs

of the mounds

It famishes

the exquisitely nurtured

yellow

around which

breakers of scarp

hemorrhage

tigerish

glyphs, accomplishing

the gravity of

Japanese inscriptions

A delicate cancer

bares its jaw,

tufts of blood

abound

in clay,

sculpted

fetal knots

a fetal navy,

they harden to seeds,

crab-like, platinum,

growing beneath the

watery ceiling of the palm

into amiable shoots;

an aubade on delphiniums

growing clearer each day

Over many months

the permutations will again

show their round, maddening

faces,

the Persian inlay

will abound

with devout layers

we will stroke on

the fine, sensual, nymphic

chemical

paint up to the ridges where we bleed the richest

I cannot evade the force, brushing

further and further

iridescent texture

on my torso, spirit,

tongue,

I’m a

bridge of veins

in air

I’m an orphic phantasm, hair

combed through with

stalactites

I’m a bouquet

of limbs appliquéd

on pouring rain,

what can the spectral evening muster

in lament?