“Go then and seek your asylum love.”
after Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates
i wear love down like a moth-bitten scarf,
grinding fabric between
my teeth i have a need to satisfy my
aching gums my
will to make it
bend has fled, i mean he
has fled
the discipline of my jaw my hand
the abuse of my tender
pen. oh,
asylee
where have you gone
my love? i think i see you
dancing, beneath the mid-atlantic sun.
i whisper your name—
asylee, asylee—
hoping the late june heat carries
my need that my
voice presses through to
you who lets out a withering
scream you, another among
many, waving under a tall tree
i plot this land inherited
by love. transient in trauma, i
dance in its quiet nest, in
twigs drenched in blood— oh—
the tyranny of these hands.
of my with my
hands i feed
my love
the soil’s boiled blood
i tear from his mouth
reeds of his throat, rolling them
between my fingers, acrid and dry.
Cover art: “Begin Again,” by Autumn Hunnicutt