Juli Ann Kroll

I. Lines Lifted from Sexton

I've been flying right along
since we last kissed,
two tender birds in a cage.
Tempestuous daddy,
I put two daisies in a bowl
and cover them with hissing.

Silly magic, heart so hard,
a cigar burn to the hips.
Let all rejoice whose twine
feels feet of house wrens and ravens.

And if you fetter any sea, love,
paddle shoreward nevermore.
Live in its blue room
and bright bright stare.

Yellow is the color of night
and green the grove of despair.
I give you new hair to grow
and a starfish to suck on all night.

You will not rust until the insomniac
sky sees your limbs twisting like wheat.

I was made in a dream
from your wooden bones.
Come, violent one
to your broken bed.

You burn in sleep and draw
telephone wires on my back.
You live in your deep blue bedroom
my yellow, voluptuous sight.

II.

Loving you in the evening
means grating you with my tongue.
Your socks lay, limp brown trout
under the carpet's wing.

Always, old man, your boy's body
bewitches. Let me wonder
what the snows forgot in you.

I wander away awhile,
come back strumming absent-
minded. I'll remember to forget
a song you hummed for me.

Four days in you means a harvest.
It's sleeting on Kilimanjaro
and your feet are flat and wide.
Can you get us home in time for chestnuts?

The stars come out on your head, love.
If you wink off I'll skate down
to sleep in your white horse belly.

Loving you in the evening
I've come down to a different path
where I've grown before but forgot.

The stars come out and it's
moonbeams on your head
tasting every song before
and after you're dead.

III.

Before yesterday I was sure
you were dead.
But the proof you had forgotten
me made you live again.

Dance, creamy hornet, velvet stinger!
It is the land of sepals and honey.
Before night falls let me touch
your face of earth.

Black oar, your night oil
bestills in me what ripples
galleyed you gestern.
Row home to rest this buzzing
beating sky.

These charms you outgrew.
Before you had forgotten me
I sang what you saw, and sawed
you in two every evening at six.

When I light a lamp you will think
what has escaped. I will dance before
you, a naked orange mum -

salient, unafraid.