A GIRL AT CHRISTMAS

The choir that cannot die.
Fish and fennel. Snow. Christmas
tree, clover and pomegranate.

For all she’s gladdened: milk
which is love dreaming in one
hand; clefts of clementine stain

the other. They cannot die,
these tribal ornaments, coral
joy, battering ceramic, peach

bones. Scotch bonnet seeds.
She then belts her savage choir
and dances herself into a festival.

*

VERS DE SOCIÉTÉ

Some meager talk of Larkin
over quiche and pâté, olives
the proclaimed ragamuffin
picked at as though our lives;

circumspect, the neutral host
blanched at pills and diaphragm,
shook her clipped head of frost,
insist he please changed from

that cold brute, to where life
is modest, the islands, perhaps,
not this social phalanx;
but he answered, none too vexed:

that’s the drivel of some bitch;
a gulf caved into her face;
the champagne flattened to piss;
cardiac breath, no one flaked,

waiting for blood on the ice,
an extremity, voice rifted
on voice; burred, tender, polite
in one spur, like crisped pomfret

forked in the … Read More »