Fluorescent Blues
Flash on and I become a white girl,
a pallid Weimar phantom, rose blooms
beneath my skin, phosphorescent face,
blown glass wrists and plastered locks—
spirits chilled under icy waves of light.
The function of the fluorescent bulb—
shine with striking flatness, destroy
whatever fragile skeins of conversation
connect you to me, us to them, reverse
utterly the religious campfire quietude
that once gave birth to gods, blast away
the blush of good dark wine, the soft
felt-headed hammers on piano strings,
the significant sparks of jewels—all these
chants too subtle for such electric fright.
In a Church of Epiphytes
The entire congregation of the tree assumes
a look of swaybacked weariness, more than
ancient, as the gray-green flames consume
the stock of metaphors surrounding it—
to draw life solely from blue sky and sunlight,
and steep carbon dioxide into the different
figures of oxygen, replenished and released
in the slow cool of June mornings—this is
God walking in the Garden. The little liars
run up the trunks. They listen for the symphony
to stop, sniff for far-off winter. But no one
ever comes to skin them. In each grove
the scene repeats, and as fat shadows shrink
to make plain the day’s intentions, a million
testifying voices sing, suspended in mid-air.