Translation
Come with your leaves, my brother,
taste bitter sea. Your words heavy
as
Bibles in my stomach.
Sunset bisects forest
like a child arranging a plate:
root-dark vegetables, meat marinated in
day.
A print in your
room
flirts with the
forms: calligraphy,
a blush of ink,
stoking
core enough to
feel something
missing: hang
short of climax.
We'll lie like Elijah part to part,
bodies moulding sand.
There is so much earth
beneath us.
7 ways to look at the night sky when
hungry
1. Sunset roasting rare
to charred, topped with onions.
2. Earth's salad dressing,
flecks of stars in oily space.
Goes down smoother that way.
3. Dark chocolate
studded with macadamias.
4. Eat the moon. It's a wafer
that'll grow back.
5. Cream-cloud Venus,
hung out as a bug zapper,
reminds us not to leave
the oven on.
6. Clouds, marble swirl of bundt cake:
bringing to mind the Higgs potential,
when we first gained weight.
Lovely to have, isn't it?
7. Orbits stirred batter.
Fired up the kiln:
hard-crust planets
with moist hearts.
Mould grew soon.
Names glimpsed in passing, jade signs
half-eaten by leaves. Worn pavement
where roads turn sharp:
two ruts.
Here, gardens grow
huddled behind fences. Sunlight dusts
shoulders. His upturned hand.
They make the best preserves,
shuttered in dark mahogany.
Date-stamped.
No phonebooks.
Scraps of paper tacked to corkboard:
inked over years.
None crossed out.
Earth, peat-moist: smears
on the palm
of the hand.
Names, too, are
enclosed.
Aaron Daigle | Japan | 2016
