OPEN WINDOW, COLLIOURE

rigid in the full tumult of that sky—
the scene is a sculpture, an over-
whelming flesh of transfigurations
cauterised under glass. its objects assume
the contours of anatomy—limbs, torso
pared back to dermis. each exists

as if solely for the lens the aperture the
observed image—its nakedness
takes form against the road’s camber
over-hung with foliage—olive-grey
between the steep cutaway & tin-roofed
warehouse stocked with anchois

the line of the valley curves inwards
& unfolds to its vulva, lengthening
in the flat untrammelled mass of sea hair
combed back from the mouth. dusk
reddens the distant figures on the shore
as they dissolve & we dissolve with them

ROANOKE AFTER THE FACT*

our little world is burning—in the gathering
folds of every shining hour a
child-like dangling from apron strings &

maternal parachute whistling
in pelicanese. there’s never any end

of lovingly half-digested
marine smells—proof of a god-in-man
durability beyond the world
of fish or junkstrip attendants

watching over the sleep-revolving world
by refinery torch-light—they keep the
tribal midden-heaps secret under tar-black

a rookery of hatchless affirmations
of the life to come & of that which will not

*Roanoke is a city in south-western Virginia and was the location of the first official settlement by the British in what is now the US.