倾国倾城后 • After Aspasia
Glossy skin plucked brows
she cooked in the open
sweat, mosquitoes
What made do as a sink:
silver container held up by a crooked pipe
going into the hard sand
Tried to leave, again and again;
after the day my toes first went grey
the colour never fully left
Spirit in a big rock
minerals unknown; nothing special
aluminum altar
Everyone every animal
gets a default name
dog after colour
as with guppies and toddlers
Notes in between lines
dusty brown texts, ‘readers’
memorised, meter helping
to prove/reach/appear
Kitchen knife for now
hanging on its nail
piece of raffia
Wart keeps returning
layer after layer
apply crimson vinegar concoction
Smoke and drink
smell in cranny
sand in eye
one eye clouding
then the other
Exercise: revise out loud:
from the page through the brain through the mouth.
A raw egg, whole
Stone god all she had
to stop a drunken knife
that cut fruit, chicken, flesh . . .
Burnt paper
bits of red dashed on stone
The colour barked on its chain
its sound exactly like its colour
Glossy skin plucked brows
she cooked in the open
sweat, mosquitoes
What made do as a sink:
silver container held up by a crooked pipe
going into the hard sand
Tried to leave, again and again;
after the day my toes first went grey
the colour never fully left
Spirit in a big rock
minerals unknown; nothing special
aluminum altar
Everyone every animal
gets a default name
dog after colour
as with guppies and toddlers
Notes in between lines
dusty brown texts, ‘readers’
memorised, meter helping
to prove/reach/appear
Kitchen knife for now
hanging on its nail
piece of raffia
Wart keeps returning
layer after layer
apply crimson vinegar concoction
Smoke and drink
smell in cranny
sand in eye
one eye clouding
then the other
Exercise: revise out loud:
from the page through the brain through the mouth.
A raw egg, whole
Stone god all she had
to stop a drunken knife
that cut fruit, chicken, flesh . . .
Burnt paper
bits of red dashed on stone
The colour barked on its chain
its sound exactly like its colour