The Witch Rain

Monsoon

1.

The boat sails a little above the street
floating and white silver, sailing
beginning to toss softly
    between khaki knees and short ends of skirts and
frilly bits of umbrella.

      Crow-wings dip suddenly low.

The street unwinds
      spreads like a fish-net in the rain.
The sea begins somewhere close,
around the corner
motionless as a plastic eye
      as a fishnet with soft white fish
                  in it.

No, this is not a painting of a boat.
Here it rains.

2.

Here the city like brown creased skin
lights itself like wounds and red dewdrops.

At dawn, a tree screams
thick with sparrows. Like a painting
it sometimes flakes, this old rain
the city.

3.

There is a woman climbing down
the ceiling
        noisy as thick brush strokes on a canvas
roughly chopping the careful walls
with claws and
              Knuckles
her voice harsh, like the grating wind.

Another day
she came down from a boat
as it sailed,
she came down and got
                  herself lost.

Her gold bangles and rings
her lips chapped dry like amber stone
                  her eyelids turning up
sharply cutting at the corners
like a steel knife
the edges of his dream…
nobody remembers what memories drip sharply from
her toes.

She has written her story on branches
and sewn them together darkly with leaves

a forest crowns her head
grows in her hair

her voice thickly builds….
She has left her body somewhere else.

4.

Water gathers in an upturned brown umbrella on the road.
People going home,
khaki knees and short skirt ends
frilly bits of day
          and a silver boat sailing, sailing away…

She climbs down from the roughly hewn ceiling
the wooden forest flakes around her
as she goes,
her nails drip,
she has lost her voice.

5.

In his dream
he finds her body
thickly sewn with dark leaves,
              her breasts bottle green
              her thighs a boiling red.

Nobody plays with the rain and forgets
nobody forgets the rain

her lips a chapped amber
her translucent eyes
her cracked tongue

she has lost her voice
left her body behind

left her voice behind
lost her body

what memories drip from her nails
what memories leafless
in her crown…

In his dream
he finds her body
and not understanding,
screams.

She like the rain spreads between his toes.

what memories like branches climb into him
what memories drip from him
              like water
how easily flooding his pores
how easily coming.

In the forest, in his dream,
cracked tongues and lost voices speak
           her bottle green breasts
           her leafless hair
           her thighs like confusion
her red, boiling skin.

6.

Crawling down the wall,
she looks at him
and misses her body,
her voices in a forest, in a dream,
wordless.

The city flakes around her,
the walls chopped freshly into bits
she will cook with her claws
on boiling red flames.

She spreads out her legs and sits,
waiting for him to wake, her boat
moored under a brown upturned umbrella
on the street.

7.

There is news on the T.V.
“These are late rains. Unexpected.
We suppose it’s a depression.”

The city thought it was done with her.
Over for this year. Done with.
She wouldn’t return.

But nobody forgets the rain.
Her claws flake the city.

She sits on melting walls
in a confusion of leaves and sparrows and wet crows’ wings…

“Come on, baby, open your eyes…
come baby, come.
Remember the rain .Here I am.”

8.

the morning
floats
on a flooded street

this is not a painting
of a boat,

here it rains.