She birthed their love affair with a mouthful of marmalade,
one white arm across his chair. In a vase on the table,
wings of forget-me-nots swayed for her in dances of jade

and eggshell. She plucked a breadcrumb gently from his sable
lash as the lonely, spitting sky of night deflagrated
in crimson curtain fires. The dusts of anger, unstable

in this dolce hour, settled on yearning serpents plaited
with pink notes of matins. Following copper-bellied flies,
her laughter tripped on sunflower rays, inebriated.

He began their love affair with a great hunger for sighs,
a long line cut out of time, pearls made cobalt by shadows.
His love � nonexistent outside a blue bubble of cries.

He hoped her silent, loquacious, fresh and filthy � her rose
a perfumed lozenge to suckle as he twisted the black
marble column of her hair around his fist. Tornados

under her skirt of nettles were his aphrodisiac
and he tasted them on the tart she carried to his lips.
He imagined her dress in tatters, closed rooms of lilac

and pretended siestas. In the brief apocalypse
of a day, they entered a love affair on apple-green
silks, lit by ancient lanterns, love making ribbons of whips.

From loveless melancholy of pigeons came the careen
of doves spanked by sun; from behind the shutters, serenades
slipped over lovesick lamentations of the streets. Citrine
into violet hours, they fed love on sighs and marmalade.


�2006 by PJ Nights