for Dominique
I know this
from looking
into store fronts
taste buds voguing
alight from the way
treasure glows
when I imagine
pressing its opulence
into your hand
I want to buy you
a cobalt velvet couch
all your haters’ teeth
strung up like pearls
a cannabis vineyard
and plane tickets
to every island
on earth
but my pockets
are filled with
lint and love alone
touch these inanimate gods
to my eyelids
when you kiss me
linen leather
gator skin silk
satin lace onyx
marble gold ferns
leopard crystal
sandalwood mink
pearl stiletto
matte nails and plush
lips glossed
in my 90s baby saliva
pour the glitter
over my bare skin
I want a lavish life
us in the crook
of a hammock
incensed by romance
the bowerbird will
forgo rest and meals
so he may prim
and anticipate amenity
for his singing lover
call me a gaunt bird
a keeper of altars
shrines to the tactile
how they shine for you
fold your wings
around my shoulders
promise me that
should I drown
in want-made waste
the dress I sink in
will be exquisite
From Hull (Nightboat Books, 2019). Copyright © 2019 Xan Phillips. Used with permission of Nightboat Books, nightboat.org.
She
Who searched for lovers
In the night
Has gone the quiet way
Into the still,
Dark land of death
Beyond the rim of day.
Now like a little lonely waif
She walks
An endless street
And gives her kiss to nothingness.
Would God his lips were sweet!
From The Weary Blues (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926) by Langston Hughes. This poem is in the public domain.
Dresden china shepherdesses
Whirl in the silver sunshine:
Columbine stars
Float in gauze petticoats of light…
Little Columbine ghosts, wrinkled and old,
Smelling of jasmine and camphor;
Prim arms folded over immaculate breasts…
The pirouetting tune dies…
Stars and little faded faces,
Waltzing, waltzing,
Shoot slowing downward
on tinkling music,
Dusty little flowers,
Sinking into oblivion…
After the music,
Quiet,
The glacial period renewed,
Monsters on earth,
A mad conflagration of worlds on ardent nights…
These too vanishing…
Silence unending.
This poem is in the public domain, and originally appeared in Others for 1919; An Anthology of the New Verse (Nicholas L. Brown, 1920).
Dim gold faces float in the windows,
Subtle as perfume,
Soft as flowers.
Dim gold faces and gilded arms
Are clinging along the silver ladders of rain,
Climbing with ivory lamps held high;
Starry lamps
Over which the silver ladders
Thicken into nets of twilight.
This poem is in the public domain, and originally appeared in Others for 1919; An Anthology of the New Verse (Nicholas L. Brown, 1920).
White breast beaten in sea waves,
Hair tangled in foam,
Lonely sky,
Desolate horizon,
Pale and shining clouds:
All this desolate and shining sea is no place for you,
My dead Columbine.
And the waves will bite your breast;
And the wind that does not know death from life
Will leap upon you and leer into your eyes
And suck at your dead lips.
Oh, my little Columbine,
You will go farther and farther away from me,
Out where there are no ships
And the column clouds
Soar across the somber horizon.
This poem is in the public domain, and originally appeared in Others for 1919; An Anthology of the New Verse (Nicholas L. Brown, 1920).