Country is synonymous
the
wood
the trees
the grass

I emerged from the bathroom smelling her comb.





Lacquered limbs in the temple
high-up storks of praising
honey-dewed hair in the bees' sting
weeping listless Maria's smoky
incense lips she breathes puff-pale
white of sage pagan beauty
of innards in willow weave
clipping tips from growing buds

Kost is drawing hymns on pews
sacred movement and obscene utterance
to her scrap-of-grace lover

tingling tiger

religiosity

still-born lamb

Dionysian hum.





Printing press

Alphabet drawers, metal soup
pieces printing
echoes of crinoline youth
resistance to aging
through literacy

silk festers, wrinkling
hosiery, the snuffle-shuffle
in the ballroom
the other swinging
her hips expansive
perfect
caged in song-bird skirts

Kost liberates the street unpaved
pigeon-plucked feathers
in her teeth, binding books
with golden strings
from her girlfriend's head.





Ebb woke her breath in rags
of night terror duck-feathered
lisps of life pressing against
her ruff pushing tailor's torso
from her She pads across flags
of shellac carpet to canvas –
fingers daubed with sexual scent
she decants her vision washing
the dewy whiteness clean
beneath her fingernails the angry
figure of Bearded One appears
wrestling a lizard beyond
the railway bridge.





Bebelplatz
or Forms of Resistance #2

The boot of her hatchback was filled with 1920s records. Musicals of the day exposed
the raw exposition under the body of her decadence curls. Bebelplatz had left the scent of crop
bar cabaret burnings. Fresh lacquered waves singeing and sinking. A curtain swings
in a tenement and an ex-prince leans forward, his cross flashing desperate honky-tonk eyes
blowing plumes across the square.

The air auditorium ripples with moon acquired waves. An enamel audience sit silent, waiting
for the grandfather to commence his lean drunken songs.
Tunnel lips
in the burning theatre.
Restless eyes
in the same store. The impassable dead-eyed glinting city.
A small boy ash melting on damp arms. A prostitute swimming,
selling her fifth that morning shouting rehearsal limbs.
Sandy tawdry limbs jump two good stories float around the girl called Van and the pre-
Broadway chatter encompasses a grass-fed anti-Semitic mutter deep in the yellow
pavement and fresh in the Druten landlady's opening rims.

The artist, Ebb, pushes it down

All the while, Kost lies bleeding camera lens capturing
the sky
The giants cool in their traditional stumble.


© Sarah Cave 2015