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[takeusthefoxes-blog]

the new one

I’m holding a bag full of dishwater when you tell me the seam of it wrinkles under the weight of being a polythene udder.

we rinse and re-use them to stave off the guilt

          a sickening trickle           down a homespun cuff.

“they discovered a new organ,” you say “a network of fluid-filled sacs”                                drop the k.

brand new organ! I wonder what tidy trauma we’ll hang off this one

you’re heartbroken, he’s under my skin lily-livered, ain’t got the guts.

in my hands the seam splits, the water breaks

and expectantly I wait for something to really move the fluid around my sacs.

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sprangtime

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seaside

we are organising a holiday together. we do not know each other well but we’ve been racking up desire on the higher purchase of time.

I don’t think we can book that for Sunday I say, thinking just curl with me in the seagrass let the moon heft the tides of our body.

I’ll fill our mouth with quicksand you’ll suck the saline from our eyes we’ll both get littoral by way of interstitial stimulation.

oh yeah, for shore you’d say, a backwards head nod tipped skyward like the swell.

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Lake Poem

if lakes have tides, where does the water go pressed heavy to the ground I bang my kneecap getting up. We taste the porous waterweed against the sculpture of our gums. We breathe its structure bifurcated lungs pooling saturated air spreading it into gristle crevices. here are my feet, pallid in the water: the third toes both curl in metatarsal commas. the sick flinch as a stray strand snakes up to tug an ankle, pulls the plug from the sink of my stomach.

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practically biblical

been reading lately about hot metal crammed along highways hot tarmac, hot tyres, hot people tired and the fug of fear and smoke dense - all going, all “fleeing”.

been reading about silt dredged up and bearing down someone told me about the force of water, an elephant a minute, or something human bodies no match for elephants like that. the earth with a thirst never before slaked, draining the last drops at the bottom, not minding what floaties come along for the ride.

here, we grin and nod in passing: beaut day. testing the air with raw winter skin and finding it good or: good-? the thought snapped off uneasily, forgotten with forceful rapidity for warm days are blessings, surely.

unease underneath like a splinter under a fingernail, hard to dig out. what do you do? when it’s all practically biblical, now?

i cried twice this week but look - it isn’t like that - i don’t grieve the looming loss, the ethereal mourning of an externalised otherness “the climate” more fragile than brittle china, but us? shoving, obstinate as two-year-olds, through the worry pudgy fingers still grabbing mouths wet with laughter and desire.

first i cried at a sanctuary carved out by some kind queers, in a moody hill-town weatherboard creaker. i can tell from their stories that they love the soil gently coax it, persuade it to provide balance its wandering nature.

then i cried at some people who love women some people who love women so much they know there’s no way to be a woman no dahlia-bordered path leading to safety and mutual respect. peddling pragmatic words, like: tell your kids boys and girls aren’t really all that different we can all play however we want.

overflowing with knowledge sounds like a good thing but there’s so much i don’t want to know that coming across the things i do want to know feels like being drained - a pressure eased, a quiet hollowness made to fill with new narratives.

[takeusthefoxes-blog]

innings

when I asked what you believed in now that you don’t you know— do the Jesus thing you listed:

the innate goodness of people the sea cricket. and as the ball engages stretched skin on hardwood and the crowd undergoes a collective yearning, straining to track red against a saturated sky I believe too. 

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admittance

I’ve always had:  skin dusted with freckles unevenly sized, messily etched;

two matching blips of shoulderbone moles twin scapula caps;

the dusky smears of past acne fading soft rose beyond fresh growth;

untidy labia crinkled like tissue paper, silk origami;

rolling tussocklands for shins halms growing bent from the weight of my jeans;

grooves on the inner curve of my eyebrow deepening to funnel troubles like rainwater; I just didn’t realise I could admit it.

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how-to:

it said avoid cliches, such as ears like a horse. but, I thought

how lovely those ears: frayed to trap secrets warm plum bells tapering to cool points queerly-described beziers. 

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soft-spun threads of morning light. Orongorongo Valley, Wellington, mid 2017.

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arrangement in a hut, St James walkway, late 2017

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T7

longnecked like fawns stumbling through the haze of push and pull. Asking if he can pop the other’s pimple before bed apologising for the emotional rollercoaster. a wheel loose—a wheedle it strikes me they could have been childhood friends, flourishing now in the heat fecund tumbling, the kind of wanting you feel in the roots of your teeth.