Riley Montana by Chris Colls, W Magazine. Source: wmagazine.com
riley montana slaps the runway
behind the scene it is 30°C
the same temperature a body doesn’t need
to start decomposing—
the body sashays away in a blue blazer
catwalks to a stop in a dirndl
hundred irises of a palazzo
& when the body stops it stops only
to let the world have a view of itself through the bow-bridge of legs
Alex Webb, Gonaives, Haiti, US invasion, 1994. Source: magnumphotos.com
Joy of my days, come
watch me run
I’ve bought white shoes
and see-through eagle’s wings
I am the clarinet’s mouth
and you the ransomed player
Kneel and guzzle me, set
the sea’s taste in my throat
and make my breast a wave
upon whose mane the sun
sows jewels
Ferdinando Scianna, Italy. Source: magnumphotos.com
One day, just another still, warm day in February, there was you… Sometimes I wonder why there wasn’t something to suggest the birthing pains of this love: a camel-shaped eyelash, a rainbow above my roof, frogs raining, a tree bursting into yellow bloom overnight, a snatch of a song. But there was nothing. Not even a twitching eyelid or a skipped beat of the pulse. And yet, now when I think of the time before you, all I think of is this grey and metallic sheen of the strangled day and the death-like silence of the night.
Last Sunday the neighbours brought me a glass of something tall, cold and sweet. They had a name for it: thandai.
Did I know there was opium in it? I did. Why didn’t I say no? Probably because I wanted to know where it would lead me. Opium. Melded into milk and almonds and chilled so the sweet creaminess could slide down my throat while a foot soldier in black crept through my veins to the silly point of my brain.
Eugène Delacroix, “Two Horses Fighting in a Stormy Landscape”, 1828. Source: clarkart.edu
Must this go on forever?
The wind
perpetual gesture
and the hand that slips
from me unnoticed.
.
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