Siren

Puerto Plata

 

 

A poorly snapped photo catches only

a table on a terrace, a magic flounder

surrounded by a lemon globe, leaking

humid seeds. Jagged Caribbean salts

star a black helix & helix here means

the sad glamour of the lost surface,

like how you looked at your black legs after love

and how, out of the frame, you hid a sunburned face

under the awning to balm it with a healing shadow;

was it that day we carved pineapple for the surf picnic

& had a bad-ass twosome against a storm warning?

I wish this photo hadn’t been botched

if only for a glimpse of your grin –

one last basking in the candor of your green suns.

 

 

 

 

Eliska of Logo Revue

 

 

kicks back a cold water glass while seated on a camphor table,

point-poised, a narrow gaze that lifts up the eyelids, a silkscreen

lets loose a school of minnow, glossed against blue by intaglio,

while on the opposing wall, on muslin drapery, legions of Li Po

stitch an autumn-rain tumult of strophes & antistrophes—

deer’s milk, ivy brake, lonely whippet—

vertical missives to the three friends of winter.

 

 

 

East River by Night at the Fulton Fish Market

 

 

the haze over the river

after the cold May rain

will break away

& lift itself;

but not so loss; love’s

a coursing body

disguised as endless fire;

look beneath the bridge 

where hell currents run;

dive deep, rescue

bodies of dead boys

who drank this island

dry for two centuries;

they found railings at night:

rivers accept any comers

just as their lovers’ eyes once

accepted them; an electric

immersion, a constant swim,

bodies, lit up by love, as

long as the flames last

in the mirage of the river’s dark waves

 

 

 

 

Tim Keane’s book Alphabets of Elsewhere has been published by Cinnamon Press and he is at work on a second collection, Something Classical in Three Chords. He lives in New York City. www.timkeane.com