kumari puja

if all were kept at the point of questions:

silver smelts slipping between legs,
spring waters rushing upriver

        momentum tosses her
   into whitewater and nets—
she reddens her lips with bites
   to warm them against ripplets
       palavering for her boots

flower and wood apple blow
through the ship’s furnace, spin her
past sunflowers         galaxies
cut from black marble

  the boy on the bank waits
            with her bucket of fish

~


last night, he rattled dream-dice
      with the red snake,
an apparition which steers him now
to the corner of Bowery and Bleeker
   to watch long blonde confidence

con brio, her gestures
      her poetic proclamation of virginity—
with each shouted reason why men
can’t have her, he covets her more

but here—her in the highlights
and him swallowed in blackness below

        from a juice glass clouded
with age, $6 whiskey-and-gingers serve

             to sharpen his thirst


 
~


possessive drums—temples, the curve of a ship, desires
    her hearthstones seed the countryside
as she roams with the deer, illuminates the unknown
    with her curious torch

a palace, a wooded throne, an owl’s song in shadows
her belly is full of apples

                  taste them on her tongue