Tuesday 12 July 2016

Summer (a love poem)

I wanted to be sure this was our island
so we could walk between the long stars by the sea
though your hips are slight and caught in the air
like a moth at the end of a river around my arms
I am unable to understand the sun your dizzy spells
when you form a hand around me on the sand

I offer you my terrible sanity
the eternal voice that keeps me from reaching you
though we are close to each other every autumn
I feel the desperation of a giant freezing in cement
when I touch the door you're pressed against
the color of your letter that reminds me of flamingos

isn't that what you mean?
the pleasure of hands and
lips wetter than the ocean
or the brilliant pain of
breathless teeth in a
turbulent dream on a roof
while I thought of nothing
else except you against
the sky as I unfolded you
like my very life a liquid
signal of enormous love we
invented like a comet that
splits the air between us!

the earth looks shiny wrapped in steam and ermine
tired of us perspiring at every chance on the floor
below I bring you an ash tray out of love for the
ice palace because it is the end of summer the end
of the sun because you are in season like a blue
rug you are my favorite violin when you sit and 
peel my eyes with your great surfaces seem intimate
when we merely touch the thread of life and kiss

              - Frank Lima

5 comments:

  1. You may be interested in New Zealand's newest sensation: Hera Lindsay Bird, who is about to publish her first collection. NSFW and quite confronting, but actually very good: http://thespinoff.co.nz/featured/11-07-2016/the-monday-extract-keats-is-dead-so-fuck-me-from-behind-by-hera-lindsay-bird/

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  2. Thank you. That's an intriguing title which i shall check out at once.

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  3. Just found out my brother's off to the book launch this weekend and that he will kindly pick me up a copy. Would be interested to hear what you think. She has a few other pieces up on that same site, but none quite as 'impactful' as this...

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  4. I liked it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the interview with her that they also posted. And I'm grateful for being pointed via that poem to Bill Manhire, whom I had never come across before.

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    1. Glad to hear it! Bill Manhire is a bit of an NZ institution, but probably not widely known (or even known at all...) outside the country.

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