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Tenebrae

Out West

Tenebrae

The wide mouth swallows stone fruit.

Flies in the sugar house.

Quake, rumble, and shudder.

Shifting plates spark a loose light.

Boil an egg, a shadow, a soul.
Where hair ends and flames begin.

The local time is now. Ring a bell.

The sky slurps fire from a leaf dish,
sucking color from the center.

Something bubbles beneath the crust.

Amid this shaking and blazing,
we sit down side by side,
for years and more years.

Extinguishing candles.
Eating underground.

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Out West

Twine your way in.

Risky little grasses. Mouth slick as a rain-soaked leaf.

Purr you open, yellow tongue.

Pin-up lips and bingo calls: lode up.

Unzipped seedlings. Some of you raw.

Hips made for hanging. The wonders laid in your skirt.

Remember being bundled in tundra, purple volcanoes and sore leather.

Without holes.

Mistaking leaves for eternal sleep: what they call a faith-fall.

Tetons thistled, mudpots armed. Blizzard-thick.

Small and sour / sloe blast home.

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COLLEEN COYNE lives in Atlanta and works as a freelance writer and editor. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Handsome, You Are Here, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Midway, Drunken Boat, and elsewhere.

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