a response to André Breton’s poem ‘Freedom of Love’

My wife with the hair that tells the history of the hunt
My wife with a waist where the two planets that orbit in
——different directions meet
My wife with lips that flower the pain of the landscape
with thoughts to extinguish all thought
with the teeth of crumbling churches
with the tongue she swallows souls
with the tongue of hibernating snakes
My wife with the tongue of an empty bed
with brows of the shade and damp of a cave by the sulphur sea
My wife with eyelashes with ashes in them
with the forehead of a frozen lake
My wife with shoulders of melting snow and the sun that
—–melts it
My wife with switchblade wrists
My wife with fingers of rain that break windows
with fingers that pick up threads
My wife with armpits of bursting eucalypt pods
and of bushfire nights
with arms on fire around the baby of herself
My wife with legs of a plough and field of turned earth
with the movements of a slow mountain climb, thinning air
My wife with calves of vein in rock
My wife with feet of saffron
with feet of details and birdbath containment
My wife with a neck of salt
My wife with the throat of a vase
with breasts of vertigo
My wife with breasts of breath
with breasts of a continuous curve from her arm to under bone
with a belly of undulations
My wife with a back of scaffolding where bird people walk
——unafraid at great heights
with a back of sand
with a nape of forgotten invitations
My wife of all is not well
My wife of a well of light with no doors into it only windows
My wife whose dreams burn her sleep and I wake on a pillow
——of ash
Whose history burns with the smell of hair
Her chair burns absence into patience
Her arms burn around the baby of herself
Her travel burns the saris of skies into my eyes
Her birds burn her freedom with my flight
Her sex a cat’s purr that burns meditation into the walls
My wife is time, the distance between the beats of a heart, the
——rings of a phone

From Claire Gaskin’s collection, a bud.