from Blackwater Quartet, selection 11

Writing Home
 
At the window, postcards of Paris,
dressed-slate roofscape
and groves of smoky brick in flagrante — I kissed your neck
where the timeslip of light incinerates the nape.
 
A grainy monochrome that cools
and reinvents the image, in the distance
Eiffel’s trellised spur recalled another age.
 
That May the April rains continued, boulevards
bound in steely mist, and cold
for the time of year.
 
As we walked,
grimy pigeons shoaled, scavenger eddies near the Metro
insinuating deeper rhythms, strips torn from time,
fluttering hours.
 
Sleeping rough on cold iambics, near Quatre Septembre
I kissed the white heat of your face.
 
In the dead light we drank to, mannequin vogues
embraced the void.