TURBINE | KAPOHAU

Cave Poem I

I wasn’t always this way.
First I was stone
compacted under the weight of the ocean.

I collected bones, teeth, shells.
I can’t say how
but they became me, slowly.
I grew from them. I wanted nothing.

I heard the muted sob
of seagulls above me—through the water
everything clicked, sounded mechanic.
I’ve kept the memory of those sounds, their hollowness,
how they dilate in the dark.

The seagulls died and so did the molluscs—
I have cavities filled with them, untongued
and unsucked, encrusted in clusters.
I don’t feel them so much as know them.

There’s a record of history behind my blind tapestry.
My horizon is instant
and impacts everything

I Touch Your Face

The sheets lift in the dusk’s crisp air,
they fall limp in my arms as I unpin them
         and loll over the crook of my elbow
when I carry them inside.

We spread them over the bed like a cool palm.
Turn the top sheet
                 and pat down the damp ripples
         over the dents in the mattress
         where we sleep.

Soon I will try to forge
your face from the darkness.
        Soon I will give up, instead
rabbiting into the closet
of your broom-brushed chest.

I don’t hear your voice so much as feel it
form its temporary impression
         through the wall
of my cheek.

         Am I bothered by it?
         That I cannot get inside you
          any more than you inside me,
                 no matter how we try?

In your oil pastel softness
you baffle me often
                   with the happy-wrinkles
beside your eyes and two absurdly large
         big-toes.

I have wanted
to hold you against my body
           and button up my coat over you.
To lock you up. But I cannot—

in the darkness our lips search
for each other and often miss.

When we turn away
and lie back to back
I feel the warm seam where our bodies meet.

And in the morning, I touch your face
expecting to be able to reach you

but fall short—the hill of your cheekbone
under my thumb and you,
somewhere in the distance behind it.