Sarah and Sarah and Sarah
alabama whirley
Sarah is not an unusual name.
Sarah often says, "it's common",
and so do Sarah and Sarah.
Sarah and Sarah and Sarah
are always in agreement,
although they don't know
each other,
and I don't tell them about
each other,
even by chance, in the night,
when I call out the wrong name.
As the dying out in the courtyard sing of roses,
alabama whirley
I
I palp pestilence with my peripherals,
an assortment of flamboyant and nervous beasts,
their flourishes hidden in damaged shells,
in the rigid unfurling of sugared rose petals;
I discover concave dialogue;
hands under clothing
as another funeral cortège passes by.
II
Coming down the road
lined with low, neatly cropped hedges
and unnaturally violet cobblestones,
four men appear dragging a laden cart.
They look like butchers in their black bowler hats,
in their stained leather aprons. They are not butchers,
they sweat and curse in fear.
/
It is a blind day
on the T of all things;
someone is daubing red paint on the door,
which opens onto the demesne of beasts;
IV
it is a dense moss;
binding the crumbling, underside of healthier days;
open wounds: dullness of laudanum memories;
an invincible low note.
V
The beasts unpurse my lips and I exhale.
“The carnivorous cactus flowered in the night,
with sticky black and yellow flowers”;
VI
we love again;
slowly this time, so pain does not lose its sense.
