Mezzaluna. Michele Leggott

suck confusion’s juice

      wet ankles tucked-up skirt

      prismatic drops in the bucket

      on the stolen stele

      knock it off

      fish it out

       2

      Common cheap and tender

      the pleasure of a purely predatory

      recipe, say crawfish étouffée

      we were seduced at once by

      the little town (no poetry) and thought

      what a happy life it would be

      only to cultivate white

      raspberries (sea also) iced

      champagne by the approved method

      then go to the Lyric Restaurant

      drink solstitial dazzle on the terrace

      and order the house specialty

      you’ll wait an hour but it will fly

      hot dry white wine, bouquet and bouillon

      the rifts and the tears are your own

      in the interstices of the lobster meat

      a rich dark roux from which the bouquet

      may be removed They did not in Perpignan

Reading Zukofsky’s 80 Flowers

      lavenders blue

      roll your eleven weeks onto summer’s late belly and look out

      at the world with your black olive eyes

      this was promised under the apple tree at Christmas

      when you swam in deep pools of picture space nine days out

      among the dream polaroids jacaranda diamante

      simulacra of before and after

      the visceral rub of pōhutukawa in bloom

      good established labour the sun going down the Carmel geese

      shrieking and flocking the big movie of us coming apart then

      waterboatmen on the lake at dawn

      and we began the long haul from Recovery nine floors up

      to Tranquility a sea a somer-séson

      all the pretty little horses pretty things pretty soon

      the goodnight fine art getting

      the lullaby to work the baby to sleep merrigolds he smiles tell me

      another one and the story remembers itself by rhyme settles easily

      into songs he likes the made-up rock

      and roll the stroller doing its stationary miles in the next room

      the two of them the two of us too whacked to

      (what??) read proof

      quote dear one sweet heart lover unquote air of heaven

      half hyphen moon bee time energy colon coffee colon

      the feeds the changes the drinks of water the spiders on the cistern

      nightlife Horace and Chick Corea at it again

      in the lamplight heliotrope splash! mother of thyme stomma cock

      mares nest and moonshine wakerobin oh yes

      and again and again the all-night frogs go la-di-da-di-dah

      to the tune of John Brown’s body

      the household gets up at midnight and stirs about

      paradise garden I would write you down he said

      in a style of leaves growing

      eyes curving

      toward that question just where do the roses swing

      are they pink and blown and warm as sleep

      at the gate where lavender works the bees all year round

      or red and sweet as tea grown cool because everyone went to check

      some story about wind roses you already knew were lining the nest

      with scent and bloom and two quarter-view profiles

      flickering out of the frame

      Boosey & Hawkes

      Black & Decker where do we get to

      slow nights when the book clears off to Baltimore unimaginable

      in the time of tearwater tea and willpower cookies

      Hobans Ahlbergs Lobel Wise Brown I Can Read

      two wind-ups with outstretched arms and joined hands

      dancing around and around the parameters

      goor jaggery plums and palm sugar

      dates with stratagems the minute hand sweeps away

      some things have to be written in later some things

      look like porcelain fingers on the coverlet unforgettable

      inhabitation the moment hand-painted plaster of pearls

      some things to be said for low orbit

      cosmos nods

      Hippolyte and Cornelia rumble over the picket

      which line is his? which hers? moonbeam you smile around

      then again it is not night when I see your face thefts modifying

      or migrating winging along close to a shelving coast

      where the expedition has wandered out of its hinterlands at last

      whooping like kids walking on sand dollars at dead low tide

      a stone’s throw from the lacewing villas way on out to the channel

      sea biscuits cake urchins (placenta to you) walking on the sea bed

      the rider in the backpack wants to bite them all

      mouthfuls of breast and he doesn’t care if it’s salty

      he cries out and when he gets what he wants we’ll be there

      Mare Tranquilitum see horse the flowers

Merylyn or Tile Slide or Melete

Tigers