Extravagant Captivities

Sex is a gift from God, right?
My father once was a monk so perhaps 
I am indirectly holy. Or, opposite
part of his flammable disorder.

What do I do with this will
to lie on a red couch, satin covering
nothing, like Velasquez’s Venus.
I’d be less beautiful, not serene.

My high stiletto on a man as another 
gazes upon my legs from the bed,
he is chained. Nights like these
continue but only in this portrait

of an imagination, now
in your imagination awhile.
I am most provocative as I close
my eyes and picture extravagant

captivities: my ear, your voice 
within; a body falling; 
a meaning; my hands opening 
on whatever they are holding.

The Vineyardess Of St. Helena

earlier the Vineyardess rode her whitemass horse hard
the morningcandelabra breaking about her the parched hills 
breaking churchfully about her thighs suffused in the heat risingjesus 
from her steed the flanks lathering as she let the mare glide
through the eyelashes of morning the veils of Eve adrift
in the valley mostly she sleeps in one bedroom now 
her husband in another sometimes she thinks there are others 
yes there are men preferable to one reappearing love she reasons
in the winelight of the crushed afternoon her husband 
works only the difficult horses the racehorses boiling 
across the track in their summergloss long-reined and riderless

Thinandflyingdress

You came down from the alpine 
to find me in the float house 
on Thorne Bay where I lay

like a plant of power 
my greenlegs splayed 
under my thinandflying dress

will you have me against the wall 
it is your fault that I am here
dropped by the long midnight

into this room with pine-willed walls 
where outside the sea lion draped across 
the mooring ball measures my soul

ravenmary gauges my darkness 
to survive I must drink of you and
after many pleasant conversations

I do until I am in my
finelysowngowntime
wild sister to the throat-high

lupine you know we have to go 
too far when you are just a waste
twistingJudas a form of no

on the floorboards thrilled
by the sea I will say you are
my love in the whitefall.

Abyss Of The Birds

Carbon, winging through sound, Y
glorious
and unfinished spinning down so down peppermint, down row eight, down star   down

digital legends, their chaosophy of minute-crash, lace-work, nude disasters of others
battering in.
Y catching in the beautiful way    a boy bunches his cat in his hands    flying on.

Low-theatre is light-slowed, simply drawn.
In under- representation and square quiet Y lengthens
as if wisdom was. Film speaks to Y, remembering
its death. Image’s nitrate orange flaring into quid-glow, sateen hips, wise rubble sexed over 
and suffered out, devoured by nighthawks, jaegers, larks circling, diving less
-
and less narratively,

., -
,

In this way enlightenment became portable, carried in the bellies of the abyss birds. 
Enlightenment no longer bound to the dark candy centers of things Film talking Y on 
towards his late noir heart, she disappearing into heart’s pineal
eye,

in the bicameral sky there she met a child, her earlier. Still
song

in the ice-tree flowering after sight.

Of A Swan

Y sees all from her oval in the bare
earth: flat country sun flooding backwards 
during the crash, Leda blinding the swan, her fingers 
in blood air. Y hasn’t flown for weeks, skills sill inside a body sheltering
what will soon be with see-through-bones a feel for sky.

She guides Leda through gentian, pitcher plants ravenous 
and huge to a fading radiance, a swan collapsed, 
mute as page-fall. He slides from her arms 
like a great ruined dress. The marsh birds are already 
upon him, their subsong drowning the sound of Leda
rising from the cut-throat of the pond.

The Givers

Inside itself for forty years,
The century plant’s gargantuan flower 
Stalk spews fifteen feet aloft, then topples.
Hove torso from its presidio of dying 
Quills. Its ancient head unsocratic,
Casts a single severe

Seed that torques into fissure, soon
To pluck up between barrel bush and stones, 
Tiny sabers faithfully pointed.
Its first fatal blossoms explain the lie 
Of giving. Almost everything. Fast. 
          Belies the futility

Of beauty offered daily,
Coiffed and curved into cut spectacle 
Craving. Better to see oneself less.
Live unremarked, unkissed, 
Glory growing-in, abandonment postponed. 
    Absorbing acids,

Radiance, winding 
    Decades of sun around a bare spool
     Articulating monsoon and moon into singular vatic ruby. 
Century, witness us: the givers. Splay legged, nipple 
Pierced, pale grin. All out for everyone
    But those who love us.

© Kymberly Taylor, all rights reserved
Kymberly Taylor photo by Donna Weaver