I.

                Wanderling with grackle wings
                you fledge, branding my insides.
                When charcoal daybreak's laudanum lattice
                alights petrol on my night lake:
                you too strand across our midnight faces
                like a flame.

                Ebon taper, seared in blue
                you stretch upon me burnt canoe:
                fierce, soporific fissures
                Knotted oak begs for oars: dark mahogany
                my arms have ground for you.

                Thieving
                under onyx aqua ledge
                I steer you, negative of a kiss
                sunken between brackish ivy.
                Here somnolent, inky eels garnish
                our shins. Thighs flash black lightning
                under petrified shivers of moon

                II.

                But still, I wear a shower of evening
                when I see you are sleeping inside me.
                Threading rivers of lime for forgetting,
                you erode every edge, my anguish
                Pale rivulets scythe remembering
                childhood hollyhocks, two palms that touch.
                Forgiveness condenses, a tempest
                where your eyes have rained, ululations.
                When you blink I wade under an eyelash,
                explore a lagoon once bestilled for me.
                (It is) your oceanic agape's tidepool ­
                turquoise cream carved in gray flannel

                Here my black wears your mouth's altered nations
                that you fan nimbus in five directions.
                Diving, I derive your source: silty release,
                monsoon comprehension inundates
                we celebrate the beginning of touching,
                birds of summer migrating over human soil

                III.

                The sky breaks russet, begrudging
                and when I see you anew, love
                you're sinking:
                wrapped in atria trapped in my sunset.
                My charred cherry chest
                grows your frame's
                carmine kisses, fuchsia vicissitude.

                Day stages red's end scene:
                layers of thought you have scraped clean
                at night
                congeal droplets of mimosa
                daybreak without permission.
                This diffuse rose light
                ebbs over your endless bones:
                melting
                as hail over warm Pacific.

Copyright © Juli Kroll, 2006. All Rights Reserved.