Oeil de sorcière

Black, tumorous, the upturned lake
That shook fishbones to its surface
And cast the flaking seedpods
Towards the bottom. The pink head
In its convex bedroom.

Orphic Tritina

Yellowing stains stuck on petals: honey
In the comb and the unwound ivory wing
That beat in time with your absence like song.

The brittle, shellac waltz of your song
Denies you grace. The touch I loved was honey
Frozen around the jackdaw’s broken wing.

In the river’s foam, I saw you rowing
As your oar cut through the sun and birdsong
From that day settled as fresh-creamed honey.

My last taste of honey, like sorrow growing out of song.

Some Kind of Bird

…and I waited and waited and waited
Until the compass of your little finger,
The smooth brass along the cheekbone
& the familiar smell of salt on your loden,
Stopped me from picking the last thread
Of the upholstered chair you saw me sitting in.

Selected Fragments

Salivary white, pushing along in noontide
Pools — webbing along the mossy
Rock. The black that stung and that touch
Of radula, furry to the eye.

*

A pair of swanskin hands growing
Together in a loop. The loam
Between the digits and
Crystal thorns that push further in.

*

The vulpine border down
            the legs and twin
knives that pierce the side
            of a great lion.

*

Among the rocks we shared a mutual pleasure.
Hands dissolving into follicle and pore, your touch foamlike
And always surfacing on a coral horizon.

*

Not quite what you seem —
Curlicues of dark hair leave
A stain, cat’s corner.

I was looking at myself,
You were looking at me, too.

---

Colin Mylrea is the author of the chapbook The Rose Bush and the Myrtle. His poems have previous appeared in New York Tyrant and In/Words. Twitter: @ColinMylrea