Five Poems

 

 

contradicting the land

 

contradicting the land             all there is

          to hold onto

 

bough

of the intrepid

 

            pine forests on his edge of time

 

can he dissect his swollen life

with sticks and boulders                         the serrated

              edge that lies burnt

 

he scalds his lips on the breathless

 

dust

on his soles

 

 

buried blue

 

he pastes

black on the wind

 

evades the reddened

sky               by tethering to his left

                    palm

 

I am the weight of a dying breath

 

we have a timed conversation

        my loud screams of skin

        but his eyes

        closed

 

I try to hold down the ruin

 

force my eyes away

from the buried

blue

 

beneath the black

on the wind

 

 

revolt

 

his bearded face out of focus

 

his cracked panes

in the water

 

his unpolished coat

and he crawls through the night

 

      claws

      along the sharpened divide

 

manifesto

of the blade

 

       revolt on his black

       tongue

 

       cliff

       among the edges

 

his chains

clamp my eyes

closed

 

 

absence

 

in a throatbone              forbidden

             to quiet

             the night

 

moonlight dismembered

by his arm

                              forgives

                              the prayer in my mouth

 

empties his veins

of the simplified dance             wrings his withered heart

            frozen to my hands

 

returns             his eyes             to absence

 

 

binding

 

the night I flew away

I had bricks on my tongue

 

         cement cords            

         binding me

         to him

 

when did he call my name?             transfer the kiss from death

       to the pool?                 

 

the glue kiss

with swarming blades

 

the gash of kisses

recalling

his tabletop

 

I am a jewel on the causeway of despair

 

who blinds me with torches

who orders the wagon-bells             his long fingers

       tapping on my wall

 

my blinking eyelash

exposed

through cement cords

 

I am become again

 

 

Cindy Savett is the author of Child in the Road (Parlor Press, 2007) and Rachel: In the Temporary Mist of Prayer (Big Game Books, 2007). Two chapbooks, one from H_ngm_n Bks and one from Dancing Girl Press, will be out this year. Her poems have appeared in LIT, Dusie, Little Red Leaves, Moira, Word For/Word, No Tell Motel and other journals. She lives with her husband and children on the outskirts of Philadelphia, where she teaches poetry workshops to psychiatric inpatients at several area hospitals. http://cindysavett.com