local bitch
nothingness came to feed
between spoon and mouth
burning authenticity for fragrance odd light licking
ceiling
burning memory the better to taste each word
new again
argent flowering in the eye crushed by cyan
diffused litanies in voices of forgotten mangoes
unpicked avocados plummeting from treetop
splattering on galvanized roof
down alley a woman sings of sugar
mornings someone is always speaking for me
telling me what is actually rolling around the noggin
mildly reassuring with all these other voices
chorus
in echelon gliding wave top into early am
“a real poet buys books, not weed” so we fired another
bowl
distance management combines space and time
loaded word ever ready
sleeping with one foot against the door
template peeled mouthworn wind
tourist trash
this colonial enterprise
condos vacation rentals built on so many restless sleepers
we don’t dress for such
brittle as bleached coral
we dress for the sun burning through horizon relentless
flowering moon we dress for each other
faces pollen shimmering
mouth stuffed with ache of cloudless sky
you can cry need be as the eye drowns in mirroring
wave action
if we are not of salt water we are nothing
flyway zebra longwings, Gulf fritillaries, yellow sulfur, red admirals,
garden flowering
pastels on your lips tendrilled wind hair tangled
burnished drifts of shell
mullet slapping grass flats
sudden
as when you pushed me against the railing
tongue twined
hands containing all
unfolding tide of breath
sweeter than guava blood thick abraded sand scoured
deeper than when you own my mouth
ever so malleable flesh
tongue and lips palate word torn angular
spilling breath
days stunned by skillet heat unbearable blue sky
birds unfolding from sandbar reclaiming wind
we love like beings spawned in fire
interlocked in our jaggedness
we hold to that bright flowering
each day as incandescent as last
each waking flame a prayer
when we speak of moon and sea
it is to arm ourselves to bind ourselves
to something beyond faith
to tether ourselves to something not human
to what lives within
blade
when we speak it is the slur of kerosene
flame blossoming tongue
driving rhythm of hammer and nail
relentless relentless relentless relentless just this
and one step more
Peach Delphine is a trans poet from Tampa, Florida.