She is born to a turn of phrase late one night
With the brine of seaweed clinging to her head like hair
While blinds open only as wide as fluttering eyelids
Let in centimeter-wide rays of street light,
A substitute for the moon hanging asleep over the tide
___
Her mother is a circle of eloquence that enchants
The men in knee-length satin-kissed coats;
Her tongue coats them in a layer of saliva
Until they glisten like larval gentlemen
Under the yellow street-light,
Unaware of the strange creatures
That will crawl from their bellies
Like bloody chrysalides
Her mother smiles,
Takes to her bower to wait for the inevitable
As words die out
Her father is a low-hanging moon
Not the one in the sky, but the one
That skims the tides with silver toes
And silver feathers
He wears no coat;
He wears no body.
____
She is born to a turn of phrase and a low-hanging moon
Late one night, in an eternally dusky motel room
Next to a highway bearing too much light as a gift
The light is golden, the air tinged with wood smoke and musk
She has two legs, two arms, two hands, two feet, one head
And six hundred eyes, covering all parts of her body and blinking in unison
___
She breathes.
She coughs up something crumpled and covered in phlegm,
Twitching like a heart winding down
In the air it dries itself;
In the light it shines metallic:
A steel moth
___
Her mother, the turn of phrase, is at a loss for words
Her circle stops turning and slowly consumes itself
Like a fish without a swim bladder
Or any accelerating Ouroboros
Her diameter shrinks exponentially until she disappears
Like she never even existed.
The low-hanging moon takes a gulp of air
And slowly sinks beneath the surface of the water
To reemerge when the steel moth's
Wings stop beating in time
With the world's heart
___
And that's how she became an orphan
In a perpetually dusky motel room
Or in a smoke-hazed bower
Waiting for her fruits to be born
On the backs of others
And carried towards her
___
You love her, don't you, despite her six hundred eyes?
Her intangible, her unexplainable, her seaweed memories
And the ebb and flow of dark water?
Your heart is flung over the sea like a net and catches all kind of treasures
That transform into flotsam under the too-bright streetlight;
You love her even in the blinding light, you poor,
Bloody chrysalides
___
Wait for her;
She is crawling from her bower
(Though her calves ache)
She is walking down the stairs
(Though her tendons beg her to rest)
Saltwater pours from her lips like a fountain,
Mixing with blood and ink
You hold out a long-stemmed wine glass
And catch the fluid as it rolls down her chest,
Store it in oak and cedar barrels to ferment,
And wait for her
___
Her eyes are watching yours
Her legs give out under the strain
Of swimming against the current
You could catch her in a net
Or tow her like an overturned boat
Or you could take a deep breath
And join her underwater
___
Her hard wings wrap around you, a crushing robot cocoon
And you find you no longer need to breathe
The low-hanging moon reemerges from the water
And exhales a hurricane wind.
The turn of phrase slips down the throats of the gulls
So they sing like feathered sirens
The world's heart grinds to a stop along with your own
As her metal wings grow tighter still, a straightjacket, a harpoon
You are the treasure beneath the waves
Turned to a body in the bright light
You love the steel moth even now,
You poor, bloody chrysalides
