Spells
Ultrafeminine
I wish you could come into my world
dream bowl of images I conjure up.
Fruit, seeds and fire; the mirror sunk into my eyes
hurls reflections back at the world, and we are
born along the Mediterranean in the strong rift of ships.
My ship, and yours.
Part of the pleasure I’ve chosen
in the age of twenty-three, inhabiting women’s places
the fluid lands, full of sun songs, oriental-baked,
humble and authentic as a sun statue you pray to:
my tiny figure, grown large
in the land of giant women,
re-imagining the world
from an age of gold to silver.
Cleopatra
who was ready with the oils
to pleasure her innocent victims.
Cleopatra
who spoke seven languages –
seven voices in seven tongues
you heard about in a woman from afar
worshipping to appear at her altar.
I guess you fear you have not
conquered me, but how does one conquer
a concubine? Not born of flesh, but spirit.
For each night I return to your side to wander,
as if through a garden that returns to me in dreams.
Your garden
and mine – part of the vision I’m carrying,
hung-heavy and intoxicating,
as I raise the swimming moon
to my lips.
Ra
I would happily call him Ra, and
worship him. China blue, azure blue,
when I am still, I see the whole world
spinning around; see my maiden days turning
into waxen years and you, the spoke that
turns my arms.
The world of tall lights and planes is
so very far away. Pluto’s gone
for another age it seems. Divined, I’ve been
your woman for so long, some mornings I awake
to that strange clock in the mountains;
a reminder of lives gone by, Autumns dead
and lived; spin the wheel, spin us some extra time.
Am I such a mystery to you and do
you want to keep turning? Always turning
away from darkness and towards light.
Just as a bird, following the sun
around the garden dreams her maiden flight,
my open arms – constellating – trail the sky.
World dizzy, thumping circadian rhythms
tread through the night; starry,
to the east where your summer pastures lie.
Villanelle
Honey, again.
Tangible body with light streaming out.
Roundness because I deserve
a circular return to the point of origin.
Honey again seeds are falling from the sky
in defiance of that solitary time when
everything was buried underground.
Under concrete.
Under avenues shallower than a horse’s flank
dark and muscular
a woman remembers.
Up there in the floating world
where all love is indivisible
I cried for days over the passing of the body I was
into another constellation
a woman remembers.
The swirling at the centre.
A dark horse returning like Venus,
familiar.
Honey, again.
Dripping from the sky in defiance of that solitary time
when everything was buried underground.