TURBINE | KAPOHAU

Drinking tempranillo at her laptop, a woman pretends to talk 
by jabbing keys. The wind does nothing but talk 
at branches or rippling metal roof, whose backtalk 
is not like the shrug of a teenager who refuses to talk 
about whatever texted squabble chilled her to the root. Tock 
of starlings in the aural foreground, bark 
of a neighbor’s frantic lab for a bass line, all talk 
no bite upon the dental consonant beginning “talk,” 
that’s amateur linguistics talk 
for the tongue’s assault to the rear of the teeth. The maple talks 
with restless green hands. The woman thinks she should have used “green” 
    instead of “talk” 
for the ringing bell of this epistrophe, calling her to a temple where only an 
    unaffiliated priest strolling by will talk 
about endings. She’s here to avoid a conversation 
with a certain widow who has decided not to grieve until caught up with the 
    ironing. Some women choose smalltalk 
or diaries, blogging, Facebook chat 
instead of thinking about the dead. This woman in particular, talk 
about repression—if she really wanted to talk 
she could at least use the first person. Instead there’s no one. Just pines in 
    the temple garden, laughing privately, talking 
with their backs to her, resinous needles muffling the ground, which longs for 
    talk 
though its mouth is choked with decay. 

Although the borderland is stony 
    and slicked by vivid seaweed, 
        the old man walks again without a cane— 
his silhouette disrupts the glare. 
    No use shouting. Parents and children 
        never hear each other. Or 
they pick up the faintest 
    impatient huff. Blackout 
        yields to voice as randomly 
as suns broadcast their flares. 

    This terrain’s all surf and precipice. 
        Mirror pools bristle with mussels. 
Generations break into foam around 
    boulders. Ahead, an absolute Atlantic. 

        But a limestone cliff at our backs 
reflects the roar, as if we stand 
    within a shell whose whorls affirm 
        each listener’s inner ocean. Touch 
the wall and feel a bass-line throb. 

    And there’s my son, leaning into 
        this green noise. Locked mollusk. 
My daughter’s magnetic waves assail me. 
    Gods and fathers rarely signal, 
        but rock vibrates 
sympathetically. What else 
    could it say? Echo 
        a kind of love, of 
parley.