In a field of barley, you are an Andalusian horse –
light’s flaxen champagne rippling beneath the naranjo trees
I am a dilettante of wanton breeds, an artisan of the sinew’s electricity.
Together, we diagram the hunt, the pointillism of hunger brushing our backs,
our muscles speaking in the language of temples collecting memento mori
You call me Tristessa – a name knotted between a drug & a dream .
At the fishmonger’s, I pleat the antique satin of my grandmother’s dress
& haggle for salmon as pink as your tongue ’s
skinned rattlesnake gleaming between my thighs.
When your wild turns to water, I bring you bowls of clove cherries,
ricotta as white as your waist, the corpse of a lamb kissed by arugula.
Afterwards, we are driftwood in the urn of a tin bath, lungs
full of birdseed & fernweh. Your fingers euologize my hair –
hooves of milk quartz, fettle & tremor in the lattice of veins.
Against the embossed earth of my stomach, you grow
taller than the bluest eucalyptus – a minaret meant for lightning.
In my native tongue, I tell you – these bones, los huesos de los árboles.
& the forest still spreads its lunar calendar into the city
of our shadows miming both – freedom & prey.
& you listen as if a child caught in a revolving door;
the soft face of a colt swallowing the breath of his first run
An animal that will soon learn to sleep
between whip & wandering .
Image by Robert Dickow