Circles and the Boy

The River, History

Lavender goes the day.

In the evening,
curtains dropping over the river filth
little boys bathed in mud,
twisted black knots in their bellies.

Underneath, the roots of the river
grow old and flabby,
bloating and turning red in the winter sun.

This water’s molten gold
spreads amply over us
in the riverside café;

this moment
spider-like, web-like, distended
in love,
distended in desire.

There is sharp hunger in the unlit houses
the faint light bulbs do not do;
the beds are empty and yellow
save their old smells.

Here, upturned breasts and opened mouths
rise with brick buildings to the sky
wounding what was left of that time
when the limits of the city
let loose its bloodied arms.

What separates memory from history?
What makes this river such an awesome god?

What of the jail letters? The grenades?
The little basement garage? And the attic room
where I once saw five little finger prints?
Muddy, crimson, still trickling juice,
fresh like your kisses.

Your three broken fingers ride like ancient columns
through my dreams,
the little boy’s bicycle tyre turns and turns till
my room spins with its impossible motion.

This city, we know now, sent out its love
letters to its children at sea,
letters brown and soaked in river silt.

Tonight, when you swim through the mud,
you may find my mother’s words,
a bleeding liver torn out of her brother’s body,
her lover’s screams ringing like iron rods
through the concrete underbellies of prison grids.
All this, the river hides.

The coffee swims like molten gold,
in the riverside cafe,
at sudden moments turning bloody
like the afternoon sun.

And lavender goes the day in our love;
the night is sharp and bloody
like your desire.

And incessantly, the peeling skin
of memory, as we touch.

My mother’s boats unmoored,
your uncle swimming down alone
to the silt beds every night
desperately seeking
an uprooted jailbird’s heart.

And still,
every night in my dream,
I speak softly to the boy of little fingers
I speak of healing
and tireless, tender lovemaking.

I fix his little bicycle again and again,
twist little scraps of cloth
on the breaking blood,
stop his tears with my mouth
because I have nothing else
to give.

And every harsh night, when he picks up
that large, jagged stone
from the purple pavement
the bloodied, angry river calling endlessly
to him
his tiny ears ringing with its sounds,

I hold his wrists against the wall
and kiss him again and again
till his hands loosen their grip
and he cries
endlessly into me
for he has such a long way to go.
The river, he knows,
in its calm morning light,
is grey and difficult to navigate.

But the boy, bathed in mud, unmoors his boats at dawn
the twisted knots in his belly now
becoming vivid streams of water
his fingers carrying traces of blood,
but not his fingers alone, he knows.

This is a dream of circles
rising up in the water
and a boy who sails
with old letters to the sea.