紅燒肉 and Apple
“the big chore is always the same: how to begin a sentence, how to continue it, how to complete it…”—Claude Simon
To begin—
suddenly,winter breaks through the window, barking from the deep back den of its throat
night trolls for bite or bicker, a black chinook bitching up a storm
and she is up
and about and cannot outwit the pursuit as dreams pry apart the bones from the fat caging her heart
and sleep,
who can calculate the distance of the shadows in the meadows from the terrain of longing—
ink splattered on paper or our lives dipping falling below sea level
a Rorschach all the while he sleeps
soundly an ocean and eleven time zones away
unaware and tidily awakening:
lives render, lightening flies hang as tombstone, frontier marker or lantern--
who can conclude?
Long is the day in search of words and the oomph that surrounds
the dew on the knuckle branch
the color exiled from a chipped wall
the stain flowering on the pillow from the imprint of your passage.
the elong line that measures the notebook’s blue-space, white between us.
To continue,
later the morning’s black handle liens into a mortgaged wrist, bowed beneath the tug of hibernal wind,
she sniffs out food and recipes that will warm and wind her down from the departed
somnambulant conjuring nutrient from the earth and the breeze from the sea settles 九份
a cool longing downward like rust and ore and peanut-braised crème
she finds in the algebra of 紅燒肉 and maple and apple, his voice
and where they were one, oneiric
though he is still
soundly an ocean and eleven time zones away,
scootering off, untied and adrift with to aquatic sleep.
Short the night of making rhyme from beast.
Short the space between the syllables of your name, cutlery and nest.
To continue,
then she marks the wind, minnows teething at her ankles and heart,
marks the way the fork fell and the fat splattered and stained more than just her shirt.
If only your accented words perched closer to me, elliptical upon your thinning lips
she thinks as lentil and laughter and letting-go sways
and language behind her eyes dispatches the winter and the wreck of her sleep
with meal and matter and an Atayal platter--
I am hastening toward you.
To continue,
late he wanders neighborhoods semblant and moonburned
cars caught in the boulevard’s lamplights, streetwalkers spark and deer pivot red in the bright
he speaks to her softly asking questions like spoonnotes into the night
who triangulates an ocean and crews the meal, eleven time zones,
whose organs know neither distance nor space, wiping way
as the pink crumbs of an eraser’s maker swiped from paper, the old conundrum
do we dare or do we dare?
To complete
you in winter full-bellied, I come running wobbly and wicked and wearied of roam,
our hope the chronometer of this, the pace click sweep by click sweep, step
our cuisine and carriage and life carnival carrying us soundly,
an ocean and eleven time zone away
once again toward home.
