and polished levers, how many screws there were, how many lantern-lit

cranes might come unfurling out of that cage. I wondered

what I would look like if the darkened chambers of my body

were unlocked. What streams of light might escape me and reveal

about the things I collect and hide, and is there a difference

between aperture and wound. Mostly, I wondered where

my brother keeps getting those goddamned Polaroid cameras.

The Cure for Melancholy Is to Take the Horn

Powdered unicorn horn was once thought to cure melancholy.

What carries the hurt is never the wound

but the red garden sewn by the horn

as it left—and she left. I am rosing,

blossoming absence—a brilliant alarum.

Brodsky said, Darkness restores what light cannot

repair. You thrilled me—torn to the comb.

I want everything—the ebon bull and the moon.

I come and again for the honeyed horn.

Queen Elizabeth traded a castle for a single horn.

I serve the kingdom of my hands—

an army of touch marching the alcázar of your thighs

blaring and bright as any war horn.

I arrive at you—half bestia, half feast.

Night after night we harvest the luxed Bosque

de Caderas, reap the darkful fruit mulling our mouths,

separate sweet from thorn.

My lanternist. Your hands wick at the bronzed

lamp of my breast. Strike me to spark—

tremble me to awe. Into your lap

let me lay my heavy horns.

I fulfilled the prophecy of your throat, loosed in you

the fabulous wing of my mouth. Red holy-red

ghost. Left my body and spoke to God, came back

seraphimed—copper feathered and horned.

Our bodies are nothing if not places to be had by,

as in, God, she had me by the throat,

by the hip bone, by the moon. God,

she hurt me with my own horns.

Waist and Sway

I never meant to break—

but streetlights dressed her gold.

The curve and curve of her shoulders—

the hum and hive of them,

moonglossed pillory of them—

nearly felled me to my knees.

How can I tell you—the amber of her.

The body of honey—I took it in my hands.

Oh, City—where hands turned holy—

her city, where my hands went undone—

gone to ravel, to silhouette, to moths at the mercy

of the pale of her hips. Hips that in the early night

to light lit up—to shining sweet electricus,

to luminous and lamp—where ached to drink

I did till drunk.

Where in her rocked the dark Zikmund—

her, by then, a cathedral tower.

One breast, rose window.

One breast, room of alchemists.

Where from her came a tolling—

the music of yoke and crown,

of waist and sway.

Wanting her was so close to prayer—

I should not. But it was July,

and in a city where desire means, Upstairs

we can break each other open,

the single blessing I had to give was Mouth—

so gave and gave I did.

Every night has a woman for temptation.

Every city has a fable for fruit—