Feather Duster

He turns on me
the jagged edge
of his gaze. New laws apply.
A laughing matter
is created
as it is
destroyed.
The joke freezes
to shards in his mouth
bleeding the taste
of steel. A doll’s arm
cracks off at the shoulder.
It lies on the other side
of the same room.

Lie as in
Recline.
Lay as in
Place.

On the other side
of the same bed
he lies
through stained lips. I lay
my fiction in his half-closed fist.
It is words that flatten
the pillow. The head itself
is adrift. I press
my hip to what’s left
of night and inflate
the space
between organelles
between passages
of text
closing off
the exits.
We are far more empty
than we are filled.

Down comfort. Damp fluff.
This vestigal hatchling
a nest
where clinging to the cross
hatch are limbs
I wrest like dreams,
his
that he forgets
to dam. The croche
slips round
and through. He falls

damned
to rest
in this jacket of veins
in this thicket of skin.