I'll swear upon that bottle to be thy true subject, for the liquor is not earthly.
                                                                                                  —The Tempest, II.ii

 

       squall

These things bear repeating. Our mascot the furred insatiable
gropes inward to the greenest shoots, toward the

little inbred tendernesses, the leaves plain
as who knows your face. That is it's all so obvious,

vernacular. The strobe light uniform on the fronds
like time-lapsed dew. We weep to sleep.

        sip

You blue necessaries: obnubliate blue
glass bottles erected on the sill. I wish
to adult the true grape—the height of years

in basebitter tang. My containers shaped by mere air,
red link, respiration. Something Greek in the trite
blank blink of the pause button. The caryatids wink

across the black shaft—the deep. Sexy, bookended.
The human figure smelts the tropical breeze.
The sweat undrying. We speak tusk and hope.

        scull

No, sir, but you have that in your countenance which I would feign. Call, Master. We're in the chips. I say when I swindle it's for my country's good. That chooses to go palacing all the year, to exercise great guns, to amuse the enemy. We're dawned to royal flush, florid fingered. This is the island we're abaft—see where the avifauna go gerunding. Are we not red and wingstrange? If you light my cigar do I not exhale the immortal part of myself? From my lady's chamber? Fie, fie, you speak idly, you speak with a tongue. I am these matter of fact mercies—don't mind if do. The verities deal spades. The niceties bury.

        sight

Canoeists of joyance, we ship our oars, blades
stained by various sun and cloud and chlorides,
the intersecting surfaces that cut a wedge of peach
multifoliate. The hills have files, I display
papers at the island's edge, the shell casings
heliograph in the waves. Transformer,

you stack elements in your blender, gold
from white and blue, slinky in a red shift,
retreating nostrils flared, inkward. The serial comedian

prostrate in your wine. An oboe swirls, tarts dust.

        shake

How do you do. Tolerable. But truth is we could
use a rain check. Vibrato in character, knocked on the noggin

by a tuning fork. God rest your palate, scarred
by the scalp of air. It's a sort of blood rolled trunk

along the roots of milk. A tenor. This is kind of real,
what I'm saying. Sturm sans drang. Etiquette.

        sink

throat string     rope gut     belly wood     bellow trunk

finger neck     razor reed     harp blood     desire drown

—It never entered my mind.

        seal

We were late to thin jazz, late with breath.
We roped crackerjack concerto. Brushing
stiffed tuxes we pulled for shore. We stroked,

ate only baked Alaska. We stropped
our straight razors, brandished horsehair wands.
We knelt in earnest. We smashed full bottles.

We were our own full sail. We topgallants.
We brutaled blue carpentry. We skated
for the gasping, booked our bow. We began.