Revelation

Absence of birdsong swells treetops

A solar migraine casts its net over the air

Pockets of slowness discernible by their oleaginous blur

Wind chimes cast no shadow across checkered plastic tablecloth

In the unlit living room angel numbers frozen on the face

Of a digital clock

On the lawn, sprinklers bend the light with no greater purpose

The Real Body approaches

With the abruptness of static at the end of a broadcast

There is no fire; it peels the skin off the flesh and the flesh off the bones

A big space opens.

Bodies fill their shadows: on the asphalt

Charred cartographies of impossible union.

The Real Shadow is white—

An angel unzipping the minimal constituent of flesh.

The world ends

Ahead of a whimper

The Walk of Love

After Oscar Wilde

Lips that are a red dove

A full moon, a grape

Lips that are a red dove

Crushed wine of red dove

A dove-purr wrapped in blackcurrant leaves

Tomorrow already beginning

And desire, not yet criminal, begins to stain

I walk toward you just so I can pass you by

I let your shadow pass through me

The shadow a dove on the floor of a tomb

A mad woman returned from the tomb

A hand looking to crush a beautiful flower

I let shadows pass through me every time

As I walk toward you

Shadows quantify the time of love, its clandestine rot

Every time love is stranger

I walk toward you and pass you by, again

The time of love is a circle that tightens

The path is a procession of shadows

Who do I walk toward?

The circle of love punctuates the end of time