Young Deluge

KT from Oran

1.
And here I am wondering about a simple hesitation in  your ankles,
an unruly lock, a cracked note.
I explore your landscapes—estranged bride,
not yet nubile and already a wheel of flame.
I wonder while, heel on my
shoulder, you take leave of fire. 

2.
Nothing.
About you I know only
the weight of a little ink in a bookseller’s stall
and the rumbling of
keg-laden trucks on a ramp.
(Curved wood and the dregs of
childhood you lead me to.
Oh, to know nothing.
— I’ll call your name when your thighs
in hurried strokes weigh blue on the poem
you dredge from my body.)
I’ll call your name.

3.
Approach of negation.
From thought rip the froth of tigresses.
Cull words from their own dung.
Don’t close your eyes when your twin thrusts
his tongue in up to the letter A.
A deluge can surge
when you expected just a nursery rhyme;
amid the watercress
a fifth season can take the sky by storm.

—Pointe-Pescade, 24/26 April 1967.