Free Poem: Florida Water

In keeping with a promise I made in 2015, the first poem of 2016 is being released freely. I have exciting news about other projects coming soon.

Special thanks to EP Beaumont and my wife India Valentin for assistance. Thanks also to the unknown seller in the French Market who sold me a steel ring promising it would bring us both good luck — it certainly made me lucky that day, and I hope it did the same for you.

Content notes: violence against women, bodily mutilation.

Florida Water
to E.D.

The sky had split into a thousand kinds of dark
when I first saw her, all shining silver plate, her dark braids loose down her back.
Later, I said: like Joan of Arc astride before the French Market
but then I only saw the side on which she wore her three red marks:
an angry scratch made by a story of jealousy or the fear of death.
She raised the sword and struck the earth and music played
the avenging angel of the apocalypse, here to make right
what the revolution had gotten wrong.
I woke to cold sweats, all filled with light, my heart beating a new rhythm
that my thoughts could barely follow.

The second time she came to me, I heard her voice: her tongue not cut
but split in two, to speak the language that I wished to cross.
Men think they can silence a woman with pain but they do not know
the things they do to tell the truth of what’s been done.
No knight, this time; but dressed up in a suit of blue, tied with a knot to make a dandy proud
and finished with a hat she must have borrowed from the Baron
for an occasion with the dead.
“So you wanna be transformed?” she said. “Well: l’ll make you new
but you gotta promise me some things first, ‘cause
life ain’t fair, but you’d better be.”

You have to understand, I didn’t mean to be a groom–
I didn’t mean to take a revolution’s fire for my lover.
I’m not the type who takes the spirits to my bed
(well, I denied it, then: but still I wore the ring).
These days the Three of Swords shows up in most draws
and young men tell me all about the mother of us androgynes
(I know the father, too, but, I swear, this isn’t how we’re usually born.)
I keep my candles burning when I can, and leave some spice
among the blue and gold.
Sometimes when the peppered rum gets low
I hear her whisper that it’s time to come–
and so I go, where I am rocked upon the heartbeat of the world.