skin lane…

People think that it is in the tangle of bodies, in the actual congress, that one person invades another and takes possession of them; that it is on the bed that we give ourselves up.

Well it is true that there is a surrender there that is unlike any other, but the real time they get under your skin is when you spend these hours alone, preparing for them; imagining them.

That is everything, sometimes more.

 

— Neil Bartlett

roc…

We are come late to the love of birds
for we are come late to love.

Before we had been nothing:
a fossilized egg, a tired metaphor, old as mutton.

Now, the sharp twinge of middle age
and we are caught in love’s punctured balloon.

In banana peel sobriety.
Furred epithet, feathered lash.

We are come late to the mythology of love,
the beefheart stain of the great winged roc

upon the ground of our imaginings,
soft like the centres of some candies.

Soft like the quilted centres of our beds,
our quivering bird organs.

Give us the sweeping shadow,
down from the mountains of Araby.

Give us the claws that catch
us from the desert path, swoop us,

fat white sheep in the meadow,
into that prickled nest, high, up high.

roc

 

 

 

 

 

— Sandra Kasturi —