Lara Zysman

Once the leaves had drained of chlorophyll,



sculpted themselves with rouge



 



and commissioned a warm light to gild them,



a few threw themselves down



 



to wash once more in this pooling



of a water most unlike rain. And you



 



cast yourself flat along the bodies



of the leaves, made yourself expansive



 



and did a wormy sort of work. Laying weight



on the film tension of water over concrete 



 



and gathering the leafscape to its boundaries.



Where else might you bathe except numb



 



in a place of your own making? The day, it went



in serial: finding a torpor so passive



 



as to ricochet: passion rises and falls on cue: crash



and recovery pass in quickstep: then and done.



 



So you’re in a new place, an unscripted space, here



neither around nor along plotline, you’re loose



 



and you’ve lost it. Far away someone



is patting you, this hand lets its weight



 



guide you gentle: far away 



there is a place where dreams grow



 



where they go round and quiet



and come down from the trees you’d left 



 



them in to find you and let you stroke



their new teeth. You will maybe never go there.



It is not a place where eyes go. 



 

I pick my gap-toothed cunt up off the floor.



I can feel it in my lap, trembling there



like a small insect. 



 



Oh cut the crap dear cunt, I tell it. 



The time it took the ocean to carve this valley,



that was one day in the life of a cunt.



 



Cunt of cordage and rigging, of shock



and sigh of wave. Then, yes—



with such strangeness it opens,



 



gives name to the sounds that rise early



at my window: wind and leaf



and leafblower and the opened husk 



 



of sun. The cunt could name mountains,



but its paper wings just beat and beat.