My skin is sliced like infidelity;

a reptilian heart sourced by an alchemy

 

that is a brute - a violent mercury, gilding

memory with speculation and smothering arms

 

in deprivation of sheets. The eye is an Atlantis,

a red funeral sea, with thousands of scales

 

advertising sirens, raped with lament, and the pupil -

a learned black bird scarring the sky -

 

is a spectacle like the crisp vinegary feathers of

the Dodo.

 

I will rise in time, standing baroque, with my salt drenched lingerie -

that whisper on your eyelash -

 

tepid but with fortitude beyond the grimace of your prognosis.

I eat that mongrel

 

and she rises, regal - a ruby, baring the woe like fangs - but hoarse

like a fracture, for the bruise to be a playful

 

heartache we share like the kiss orchestrated in a shell,

or an oyster made with palms,

 

or osmosis.