Sen Jak’s Address to Storms

As for palm-food, pinched face on the fruit
in your hands: that milk is too sweet
to be trusted. Fort my part I prefer lime
mingled with blood in the whorls
of this tattoo. While waiting this out,
you should eat, lament the singe
and sting of your fingerprints. Sediment
here, and mist. Not to remind you. To anchor.
Call us a cult again and watch your washing
waste away to a burial. I afflict, I affix,
I wish constantly to impress. Save
suites for my suitors, my chevaliers.
Between us we have hauled this weight
like a pair of jackasses, tails and fates
tied to braying ends. All this costume,
it comes from theatre, bespeaks bellyache
of joy and starvation, suffers satin
and deadly serious, gasoline
a bounty no less for burning. Tinker these
toys made of tin, rusted sailormen.
I impress upon them no clemency
but the mercy of my inhabitation.
They are all shipwreck stories. No, it is just
this room, falling into water. Of that,
even the dirt remembers. Taste the bread
we’ve made, hien? You, too, will have souls.

Raymond McDaniel