big bed


Close the little papa’s eyes,
close’m eyes, close’m eyes.

Sleepy baby with the goldfish lips,
deep dark lashes, angel-pink cheeks,

ears like truffles, or hatchcovers
for underground shelters.

Darling baby with the snotty snout,
swept-back ‘in flight’ hair,

the tightly closed lashes
of a president embalmed

in a coffin of dreams, under the eye
of the gaudy activity bear,

Ellis’s Arepa Omeka —
a tattooed, rope-wristed

hand and a fish —
the poster of Barney and friends.

The curtains shuffle in an easterly.
Tamarisk feathers fade yellow, fade green

in a sea of moist air and chimney pots.
Not a palace, but cheerful,

this little house and warm.
We have an angel in the bed with us:

chafed fluey nostrils and wide
globed brow, his right arm flung

between her face and mine,
the left left out on the covers.

Spider-red capillaries on shut lids,
Chanel lips succulent as anemones,

nipple-blistered still at twenty months.
Her ring-finger hand covers one breast.

He sucks the other and fiddles
with my penis with his foot.


Listen to the poem