Graveyard Shelves
The island falls apart, becomes itself the sea.
The ceiling fan is in love with the sea, is dead, spinning.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill, sky-up you can see it.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.
Same as your polka dot sheets have blood on them, draped over the hill.
Same as they drip on fireflies and put them out.
A black fox stain walks out of day like a tarfly and falls dead.
It has extinguished—honey and water and blood.
You’ve flung blood on czars for their fur and it’s alright, I hate them.
I hate their gold-corded curling globes that glow out from the center like a holy heart.
Like chunks of smoke the heart can shine through, crooked, wrenching.
Films wreck through the smoke.
Films wreck through the smoke.
It’s honest, I’ve never lied, I’ve always spat my own blood.
One dark night, my Tudor Ford climbed the hill’s skull.
I watched for love-cars.
Lights turned down, they lay together, hull to hull.
They were trucks in drops of water, wrecking with the ground.
Like chunks of smoke the movie could shine through as I kissed myself.
Films wreck through the smoke.
I hear my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell, as if my hand were at its throat.
I live in a crown-cage. I am what the air beats.
I myself am hell, am hell.
Nobody’s here.
[some lines adopted or straight-up stolen from Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour,” Life Studies (1959)]
