So many blank pages
are waiting for a little writ spittle.
So many blossoming trees
are turning white under the full sun.
I feel each leg as if it’s a saber
piercing and black
stumping in the dull earth.
I hear my love cough and toss
in the dark bed behind the door,
the shades are drawn,
I feel the sun licking its bloody lips down
the public lawn
and I want to go out to the white
places on the map.
Maybe I’ve got some Tatar blood
or maybe I’m just going pale with my imaginings
but I want to go where the sun forgets to set
just west of the Urals,
I want to speak the language of horde-tremors
and tents, the kind the glassy cupolas of blooms
blow full as, then collapse,
where the light falls like bone-shafts
and solidifies to mosques;
I want to gather in the calls of ibises
and the teeth of my foes for a wristlet
I want to bring them to my love
and hang them on his bones
letting the drapes fill with a moaning song.