#rogerreeves

The Mare of Money by Roger Reeves

The lungs are a temporary house. And, I am housed in a breathless city. The mosquitoes drifting out from a glass Of champagne gnaw on the skin above My elbow. Tonight, I am glad to be Eaten from the elbow out, the wedding Covered in smoke from lovers' mouths, not-so Lovers drifting in and out of the bone Of their bodies as if it is possible To sift oneself through the screen of a door-- Tonight, I am glad to come to a bench, The yawn light busy in its red yawning, Nothing feeding nothing--mosquito--lover-- Lover--mosquito--Do you take--I do, I do.

Romanticism (The Blue Keats) I want a terrace of bamboo. A stuttering harp. A garden fitted with a grotto and gimp hermit. I want to lose my last name in the crickets Coupling beneath my feet. I want the body’s burden, Four more angels to drag through the streets Of a city that finds the monkey sacred, the fool careful, The monk dumb. I want a painting of persimmons And a persimmon. I want the violence of my love To leave my sleep and my lover alone. I am dedicated To the same baffled heart I have always carried. The diamonds and mud of my mouth. The midsummer  Lurching toward the late-summer heat that will kill The sage and tomato plants tanning on the veranda.  I want the water and the leg my uncle lost coming from the well. If one body will hide another and call this hiding love, I want to always torture myself with another’s wet borders. An ankle clicking against an ankle. The wrists fettered.  There was something I knew before this. Before my hands Tore at the ropes, snapped cedar poles and ripped the silk  Of any tent I lay in. I want to know how the savage Wind loves the house it destroys. I want to know before I am both house and savage wind, before all of the tents  In the city become tattered rags snagged in the hair Of our children and the red-headed trees. I am careful To want nothing that I cannot lose and be sad in the losing. A terrace made of rotting bamboo. A harp lost in its singing.  My last name and the tomatoes falling from the vine. Woman, I want this plum heart. And the dying that makes us possible.