I love your distance,
and the spite of time which
promises you to me

your low voice, a barn owl
and my little heart at one-seventy
in your claws –
you save me,
we save

all the currency for
later, the only
modern frugal kids

but God, those coins
burn holes in our pockets don’t they
sometimes love.

There are low, sinuous promises  
of mythological sin;

a snake laughs in the grass,
pistol-writhing and
opening its hell teeth

til I hear you crush its head with
the edge of a shovel,

and you are shouting beautiful names
we have never heard.

A baby artichoke heart
presses into my womb – it is the
personification

of our touching foreheads,
held knees and
swallowed seawater,

how you pull lunar strings
and get us out of the rip.

We have a black earthy garden
it slithers with green and tendrils,
the soil’s tomato breasts,
cupped palms

words are consuming us,
and you say to me when we are
lying there

that when I smile and the sun
falls naked through the
atmosphere,

these things are only
seemingly unconnected.