ELLEN MORGAN BUTLER
Aubade w/ Elizabeth Taylor
after Wallace Stevens
i. (Antony)
I feel
delicious
like a torn silk.
The uncomplicated sheen
of a true tear, clean,
for which we long.
That beauty exists
demands
the lostness of the object.
(The truth is hot in us)
The purple odor of the morning
is nothing
but an elegant and abstract sheen.
The lover sighs for something she can breathe.
ii. (Caesar)
The point is I want everything
I see.
I want to feel
delicious
like a torn silk
like a wet leaf sliding down a tree.
My eyes are wandering
like the shock of too-white teeth.
Like smooth fish
slicked blue through rivers and then
picked clean as Pisces.
Starry texture on the dawn
horizon like the set of some
Italian movie. (Feast.)
iii. (Cleopatra)
The arch of the sky
is in bloom
with red nothing and
the blueblack wind spills
more blue into our round
mouthfuls of this
morning. Twice
you’ll tell me about
one of
everything.
Poor blue boys run
to meet me running
out of things
to see.