King Zazie

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The Three-Part Radiator

for Theresa

 

 

1

 

The tourmaline hummingbirds

Trapped in the rowboat of your shiver and sigh

Have magnetized the smoking eyes

Of those 1000 caryatid barricades

Paris mirrors her 1000 legs within

Because the dolphins shelter black fireworks

In the white trees knotted between your breasts

Where the shades of all the wings are electroplated

And made into spoons

For capuchins.

 

 

2

 

The spoon stops in the path to ask

Why the phone lace little Escalator Swan

Where’s your knuckled nerves Keyhole Ghost

Whose cinnamon path is shuddering

in the kitchen down below

telephone like a tree

takes refuge

in your bed’s old-fashioned waterway

separated from its oysters

its pillows a silk neck

marked with physics chalk

on the blackboard of the peacock

The spoon stops halfway through the story to ask

What’s new in shoes Tobacco Dictionary

How’s it hanging

 

 

3

 

Her silk neck

stitches a wheatfield

around each corner

like a noose

made of a swan’s avalanche

Beauty’s sleeping umbrella

she murmurs

into the hummingbird corpse

not far from here

where we are both meeting

 

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