I don’t want to be mincing any more
gingerly sick of the eggshells
I am warm crow screaming throat-hoarse
blood pooling like salt after a coughing fit
yes a comfort / yes a thankless penance
we’ve been here before / stretched out
in the lap of indignant indigo indolence
if you get there before me put in a good
word before the council before
they load the scales I will be
just a minute scouring my nails
with an obsidian blade keeping
a weary eye on the horizon
well if not / feed me honey / keep me alive with
poetry / still I sneak sips between each bloodless
sword / shrinking between letters / keep me
staved off and starving / sane but never sated
teetering on a brokered brink
clicking hungering teeth along
the barren hull of a wilful ball of yarn
my interrupted thoughts all
stopped clocks staking testament
to an immotile moment
they say slipper a needle threaded
with red into the banana-heart
bend her to every behest show
me your roving ropes your damp hangmen
a shibari monologue tightened
to a perfect snugness leaving
the safety shears in my left hand
later,
fall unsheathed a puddled
net from naked sharkskin
a rind of cruel cord coarse in your soft grip
string me up to dry / flaking mackerel
streaked with cyan glint / long have I wended
winnowed dart dodging for the one
way to catch & twine me catgut
step slenderfooted point-blank into
the fibre arts the poem a tether
drop not your anchors, merely silk-skein me to the shore;
pull back my hair / attend the batwing sleeves / loosen my
tongue for your knots
I, milktoothed buffalo-horn comb
unhurriedly unpicking each tangle
from its sister / weave something strong
but soft with which I may
dangle from death
each point in time murmuring slung
sliding in tandem a glass bead kissing
its neighbour
as itself
the workings of an abacus miraculous
kneeling sweetly to beg
unresolving the infinitesimal
problem of the
calculus
of change
after this, I, a snakeskin shed
spent washed up ashore
still gripping
that single strand
in left hand
marylyn's textual efforts 