Melissa Buckheit
Noctilucent
blue, a dark-blue mineral in designations
of certain bluish salts and minerals,
of cyanide, cyanic
the blueness of skin
cyan
the blueness of sky
whose greenish-blue is like water
breathed in, supplants air
(my) cyanosis
condition in which the skin appears
blue from no oxygen in the blood
Blue the blue of painted Greek boats, blue
mercury light
alive with the kindling of moths,
shy, shining
in the night
little noctilucae not marred in their bioluminescence, night-
glow (if bugs)
making marine phosphorescence,
like love
Latin moon-lantern, Japanese moon-
lanterns strung orange
for the night-
walk to a lover’s door preceding electric blue
lights of the city
from space
nights are illuminated by noctilucent clouds, waves, beaches and celestial orbs
migrations of aquatic plants whose cyan flight
is mutable change in light,
dark (the homes) we make glowing in
other bodies
our lovers
asleep (inside us)
Outside the yard
you’re mixing paints for the new
voltage of the body
How much can you charge her before she
rips off into the night
green on blue red on orange the difference
pigment, one teaspoon of sun
jammed down the throat of a passer-by
will not save us.
The plexiglas is a shield between you & the nude
her breasts pucker as she falls asleep
in the declining day
sprawled on the carpet, her
most intimate sleep in your gaze.
You have to wake her
to arrange the limbs again, frozen
and drowsy slightly overweight
she is as your mother would have been
if she had been someone else
a model a woman not a wife.
You circle the house
on a wish from how many directions
can you invent her, firestorm in the distance
nuggets of rock break the sky
into its elements
blue from yellow our bodies from
what it takes us to get there.
The paint feels wet through the glass
it’s you alone in a room
in the lessening light
suspended in her heat,
a double image no face but hair
like a talisman for the wrong gender.
I was sunbathing on the rockface
when I said I liked you
it’s easier to cross,
with our other bodies, here,
performing the functional tasks, eating
sleeping, speaking in each other’s ears,
ambulation.
A nice walk is profoundly calming
6 a.m., the sun charges you
a chemical bath
2 parts your palette hums
in its beauty.
Otherwise we are caustic
we are planning ourselves
in shy light
the paint covers your body
charcoal on your forearms
as you throw yourself against the paper
wouldn’t it be funny
to mark yourself
to a plane where a woman
owns her sexual organs?
Where you fly your own body out
as the nude
blissed and in terror
I watch my breath regulating
the air traveling in even waves
a daily swap with yoga
in a chair in the yard
who can say
in which direction we will turn.
Sleepy hand
making water in the desert
the same red earth
fingers across
polished by rain
all night
lonely to dream—
I fell in the earth, my heels
clung to the pine
bloody—
our eyes combine
behind white gravestones
no water no water in the body,
it has left
your hand
inside me
whom you have spoken for
This isn’t the answer. The answer is my hand on the table, saying what we thought privacy was, on your forehead cupping the temple where the fine hairs begin. What origin begins with hair, the tenderest movement out, ends with bodies lining graves, an inability to pronounce the phonemes of your now foreign language. The language itself, an answer. The woman isn’t answering the phone, the woman isn’t answering anyone. The woman isn’t. The woman is chemically altering from the moment she is ignited. The woman is a girl. My palm across your temple, your eyes which follow me as I remove it. Tied to a tree isn’t the answer. Tied to the back of a truck isn’t the answer, as it moves over miles, isn’t the cold hospital room, isn’t “you’re not my daughter anymore and you’ll never be my son.” This answer is evolving, this poem isn’t, recall to me the names inscribed on sheets, almost almost. Your palm as it cups my temple, covering the left eye, the language itself. This isn’t a wave as it takes a whole island, then buries the island beneath the island.
