Poetry
Paladin
Shrive me, beloved, / for I have exhausted / the bellows of / this particular life.
Shrive me, beloved, / for I have exhausted / the bellows of / this particular life.
decide, in the ignorant way of children / that now’s the time to grow up / fold away your dreams / along with your wings
Did anyone think about cleaning advice / for carpets stained with enchanted detritus / the silt from a thousand journeys
She didn’t cry when it happened. / She knew before the news told the story. / She knew in the way that a woman knows
Spinning languidly in a particle stream / forfeited to gravity and the final dead cold / lies a slender needle-ship / glinting against stygian space.
For weeks— / gather bones. / Meander underworld.
Work wood on a potter’s wheel, mold it, / warmly glowing with oil eased in so it / forgets that it was never soil, never clay.
so married / by skin / even my fingers rush to study / every dry groove you carve across / my own face, our face, / the single self, splitting into / foil and forgetting
The knight shone brighter / and smiled wider than the / princess who would be his / bride and said, “I have done / It. I climbed the cliffs until / the clouds wove fog from / my breath.
Kongamato has breath like tendrils / of leathery fog.