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.

My face a wet painting

She turns her blue face to him in marriage
He has a ladder
He looks at her with a withdrawn chin

The birds peel the paint with song

I was born in the ruins of his life
Every word artefact
In the centre of the wheel the heart unfolding the road like
——a love letter petals fall from

Let all fall from him

From Claire Gaskin’s collection, a bud.

Mistress of arrows, Arachne
Give me rivers of reason
Form a back water
The pillow spiked with spiders.

I turn from the smell of dreams
sweated on sheets
lay my head down on the pillow that bit me.
Meticulous thinking left a scar in the middle of my forehead.

From Claire Gaskin’s collection, a bud.

Lying on a hot
rock by black water with a
friend soon to be dead

Children jump on a
trailer load of leaves, adults
scratch the earth with rakes

A bird call
a crack high
in the closing sky

From Claire Gaskin’s collection, a bud.

Like half eaten apples
naked mothers pose for their well-dressed daughters.

Wind in a glass drowning in its own voice.
In the throat of a rose language is strangled.

The world is a hollow humming and
the limits are lace.
A thousand tiny fingers make beautiful mistakes.

The traffic is a ripping seam.

A wound to the back of the heart.
An axe in wood.

Prayers on my fingertips.

From Claire Gaskin’s collection, a bud.

light arrives before the car drives past and is gone

just placed in pebbles the words amore mio in the cemetery

headache cicadas deafening the river fast

breath is happening the rain is happening here there is no better

every seventeen syllables cicadas leave this shell on a blade

From Claire Gaskin’s collection, a bud.

Leaning on the language of leaving
and the road a line from a song,
the door smiles open

After the crescendo
the tick of the clock
and a car driving past

Headlights behind her
she is approaching me
moon walk with my daughter

From Claire Gaskin’s collection, a bud.

in her hands
static
staring into the flame patting the castrated dog
learn to sleep in the middle of the bed he is not coming back

static
the tick of the clock knocking the right side of my brain into the left
learn to sleep in the middle of the bed he is not coming back
just to sink as the tide goes out surrendering to the pull

the tick of the clock knocking the right side of my brain–into the left
ambushing the house with blue and cockatoos
just to sink as the tide goes out surrendering to the pull
one metal ant scratches its painful way through veins

ambushing the house with blue and cockatoos
the flowers have been dead in the vase beside my bed three weeks
one metal ant scratches its painful way through veins
my feet mis-spell

the flowers have been dead in the vase beside my bed three weeks
my feet a century away
my feet mis-spell
the smell of vase water on my hands

my feet a century away
time is chilled in water
the smell of vase water on my hands
this is the day when the heart attacks the bird in the sky

time is chilled in water
is the touch of tenor on fingertips
this is the day when the heart attacks the bird in the sky
a knife under the pillow for cutting memory

is the touch of tenor on fingertips
the bare ribs of words the wind blows through
a knife under the pillow for cutting memory
falling off the edge of the page

the bare ribs of words the wind blows through
staring into the flame patting the castrated dog
falling off the edge of the page
in her hands

From Claire Gaskin’s collection, a bud.

If my head is a bunch of flowers,
my throat is a vase choked with stems.

If the wind is drunk it explains the knocked over tables.

If my mind is a membrane stretched over the mirror,
the sky is broken.

If I cannot taste fire my breath is scented with dank flower water.

If the rain is ink then the face at the window is unreadable.

From Claire Gaskin’s collection, a bud.