to pass the root in that way, to go knuckle deep in another,

in a third way sucking white sap directly

and watering the teat, going out unshowered but for that fresh sweat –

am I the steaming black street, am I the banner and the band, the crush,

lilting ale, tipsy hug, charged flesh and open eye

That was then     heading to First Out when it was us on the menu,

salad of fierce look and full power lasagne, speaking with full mouth:

queer, lesbian, dyke. Offender of no gender. Failed woman.

Swamp. Black flag. Bleach blonde. Sunday Happy Sunday.

What it was to me then, those bare arms, to have found them at last,

below a slow float, that heat, that mood, that pride.

My body taps me on the heart when someone in soft leather swims into my ken, that smell of squat and underground and every other lover, scent that throws off shame – these days I pass you in the street, though I want to turn around and thank you for the tongue in my throat, for this thick and practiced ass and cunt, for my plaited scars and flat nipples.

They call this a city, I call it the dark between two bodies.

james o’brien: Do you understand why the authorities have not been able to confirm that definitively to you?

nazanin aklani: Yes, because they let them burn for too long. You know, James, what’s more horrendous than getting burned alive? You know, you ask yourself is there anything worse? And I’m afraid there is, you know. Having no remains.

Sentence

If mum is in the living room / sister in the bathroom / then sentence says / morning / the two have not yet / said their first words –

If mum is in the bedroom / sister in the bedroom / then it is evening / and sentence says / sister is leaning against the door, cross-legged / drawing –

If the two are in the kitchen / best friend also / unzipping fish spine from / its studded silver flesh / then sentence says –

the wound around the waist of the house punctured / full of indoor exits that do not close behind you / stairs / take you back to the start / what you were running from / dark warps the frame –

the people have taken their hands away from their eyes / and have stapled their mothers and sisters to the underpass wall / their cousins and brothers and lovers to the underpass wall / only the missing – never the dead – to the underpass wall.

Not rivers, towers of blood.

Ark II