musk
by the time even
I set my love afire
there is the stink
and no hold
of male
coffee grounds
in fresh coffee
sweat
and old wood smoke is man
we all fall in love
and again
says guinevere
but in May we smell the stink
the overdone tree blossoms the fecund
pond
hotdogs
on a grill
love is smell and smell is memory and memory is stink and funk
what did the baby goat say to her mother?
maaaa
she said
maaaa
and how did the tree fall down the hill?
no roots
they say
no roots
the wool of the lamb was rotting and I wrestled
with it while my father rubbed the iodine
the mud was made of shit and pee and the tingle
of fresh rain a moat
of earthen muck
before I set my love afire
there were blazes
in the valley
and even as my love flagrated dewdrops
sizzled wind
what else
would make such smell?
Path as is
This is not the river of my night
I am not standing here singing
beneath the river-trees
My father swam with the current and stopped
My mother washed away, she said
This is not the river of my night and
River rats do not make their homes here and
lovers do not kiss on these banks
From my shoulders flows a long white dress and yet
underneath their beauty-bare there is stubble
in my pits and my simple swing
keeps slipping to the left
calabash
calabash still the night in black
memoralia pretending to the evening light
and mimosas fall from cliff to sea
with no splash
all is night
or early dawn
mud madonna watching
from her tower
the grain mill smooth and worn
early dawn the softness of nightgown
and stone
azaleas arresting
follow the water and not trickle, tickle
our words with morning coffee-foam and a light brush
of long hair
nothing, nothing but mudded flesh
sunwarmed in shower in view of the sea oh see
as far as it is
mimosa stills and nothing, nothing
not taken in and consumed, gusto
early tea and binoculars to moonlight
touch
that easy foam and feel
riptides
through torso
gametes and monacles
touch the old wall
madonna
over all
Naomi Buck Palagi has made her way to Northwest Indiana via many stops, including a "homesteader" childhood in rural Kentucky, complete with goats and lots of bare feet, some years in the Mississippi Delta as, among other things, a furniture maker and ballet teacher, and several years in Chicago doing the small theater rounds as an actor and director. She enjoys shaping tangible things—wood, fabric, sound, words. She has work published or upcoming in the journals Otoliths, Big Toe Review, Moria, P.F.S. Post, and Blue Fifth Review, among others.
© Copyright 2009 Naomi Buck Palagi
