Closer, amore: it’s better than the dark:
to be so close that even your prized eyes
are useless in the light. Come to tongue
and nose and auricle and chin, the realm
I rule, more ancient than your perspective.
From the taste of your skin, you’ve been
to the sea. Smell the lemon in my locks.
Let it mix with the olive in yours. Closer,
let me breathe for both of us. Let me hear
you gasp, a swimmer who can’t find his
stroke without his strega, his wet witch.
You’re out of your element, and I am
terra incognita. And there are miles
and miles of me, unmapped as India,
a blue god’s flute song in my alluvium.
It’s what you hear when I’ve smeared
you with me: my Hindu din and drone.
A nugget of ice melts in a forsaken fire
in the snow of Monte Rosa, the massif
itself melting in the sun of Piemonte ….
In that nugget is my other name,
the one no one knows, the one
through which I speak in tongues,
and it’s not my Christian name,
Margherita of the pines, Margherita
of the forest, of the sixes and eights
and nines, it’s not my family name
not my given name it’s my taken
name, Oriflamme, Ori, say it, Ori,
venga las noches al torre de Escobaz,
I’m giving birth to a grosse fugue
a whole chain of being a spectrum
not on your or any man’s palette
fuck the red thread fuck the needle
don’t stitch it up rip the lining
strip the curtains from their rods
you paint what you see but I am
the bristling that sees with its fur
tell me what comes no who comes
Raffaello when I come who is the
I who is not I this question is real