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The Wedding Moon Stone
Alifair Skebe
I. Sisyphus
Water could not penetrate the pine needles
atop her head, coarse hairs with baby's breath
and rosemary woven into the tight frame,
white netting attached to the tiara.
Clay molded into a hot face ruddy with sweat,
pearls swim in a half-moon sea.
She will think of the ocean shore:
the sea turtle lumbering to the surface
to procreate at the place of her birth.
She loosens mud with hardened fins,
leans to the hole to lay six eggs, buries them,
crawls back to the mouth of the sea.
On heavy wings, she glides down the salt path.
II. Out of Sleep
Hot rocks stirred in acorn mush to cook,
to boil in a basket. Mamma spider poured
the meal on leaves to sun-dry,
dispel the bitter taste. She gathers
acorns, picks each fallen morsel
to have enough. Moons ago,
mountain glaciers cooled, warmed
by sun tropic, into a stream where
minnows float on their sides, tiny sperm
in a body full of ocean water.
The embryonic fluid spouts
albumin cracked egg at the mouth
of a cavernous aperture,
dark apricot pits steep in distilled spirits
to gain the taste of almond oil extract,
the taste of egg whites
slipped out of hairline fractures,
shaped by boiling water; she tried so hard
not to drop them too quickly into the iron pot,
still some bounced off the bottom.
Next morning, she peeled back the shell
to find a marbled pink egg.
III. Standing on Fishes
The mirror reveals the pink
between her legs, creamy white, then dark,
and crimson folds about itself, curtains
closing on the stage opera finale.
The violins take the last bright chord in unison
while petals fall from the stamen.
This night seems heavier than humid.
He walked her into the vacant street
at dusk. They ducked behind the school
for kisses before St Francis.
The sundial was cast at three
by the yellowed lamp in the window.
She pressed her palms to the glass,
a shadow peered into her
mimicking her glance, and she glided her tongue
across the dew-wet frame.
IV. Water Flame
His palms brushed her waist, rested warm
on flushed cheeks, eyes to eyes, lips to mouth,
he pried hers; tongue in a half-opened oyster
shell, delving. Unlike the sea, you suffocate
with a smoke, sparks light in the gray-blue
of your eyes. Honey mead down her throat
swelled in her brain. She noticed the curl
of his lip as he spoke, parting,
turning, closing.
Her eye winked,
air whistled through new leaves,
branches thick with rosebuds. Sour mingled
as he lifted her on his lap rocked baby
in a basket as he sent her down the river
tilting in reed water, cattails, breeze,
and family. Turned out.
V. Montana
She sits above a blue ceramic coffee cup,
waiting. The cringe will come
and the slow drip collecting primordial freshness,
wild shores tamed by expectation.
Little deaths, burnt umber. She had spread
a canvas and smudged charcoal, scratched
at the weave partly unraveled. Pricked toes
danced on the sheet,
fleshy mass turns muscle deeper
in the spirit pulled down to wooden slats.
Her hair is long, so long they say,
hair of down down down
the eyes of a thousand drunken sailors
drowned at the stern, the gilt ring
around the half-cut bubble Aphrodite bore
out of the sea. She is a song.
She is a folk tale streaming with ribbons
May pole around her neck, old tea bags,
dirty dish towels - all pink, all swollen.
VI. Dolus
Stomach turns, cuts inside red and red.
In a little boat he crosses a mire,
birch branches float past,
purple black sticks to wrinkled fingertips;
he paddles with his hands. The sun sets,
the sky is kin to blood. He sang, Once
it all burned with vengeance,
once it followed my heart,
she burned to the bones,
she was born of the bones.
Moon blood for the night she lost.
Chrysocolla and yarrow for the scars.
She paints in circles. Women stand
around her bed where she caresses
the mattress in waves,
buries her salt in pillows.
ISSN: 1449 - 0471
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