Owain & Haile XIII

XIII.
Instead of a bed of roses,
she coats the sheets with rice.
He laughs at the whiteness
against the deep blue cloth, and the way,
when he shakes the sheets
and throws them to the floor,
the grains fly like shattered glass.
Her gown sticks to her skin at the back
and the zipper has found its
negative in her leaning spine
and her hair [...]

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Owain & Haile XII

XII.
Along the cobblestone road,
the fields and valleys toss in whirlpools.
The mountains in the distance
are jagged birthmarks on the sky.
But mostly it is the mushrooms that burn like lampshades,
with their pulsing, bright red spots,
that make them feel illumination,
feel like they are falling down
as if they’re tassels caught in children’s hands.
With accidental eyes that seem to
walk down [...]

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Owain & Haile XI

XI.
They speak in morse code with their tapping feet
as they wait beside their only guests:
the doctor and his bright young wife,
the florist with a bundle of cut amaranth,
and her grandmother, fading in the wind.
The river to their right runs thick
with carp and arrowheads,
seems to build its rapids like
toothpicks forever crashing to the floor.
And even though [...]

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A Rapunzel Type of Girl

     The other night, I was having dinner with Irena and a few boys we met when–over a cheap metal serving dish of fried chicken–I said that I loved a big breast.  We talked about the boring normal things (classes, why-are-you-taking-Econ [that mostly came from me], where we were living, etc), and I happened to [...]

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Owain & Haile X

X.
The skins of unripe cranberries
are scattered on the ground,
and it is not long before she thinks they’re rubies.
The whitened dandelions are spheres of opals,
and the grass is spears of emeralds that
are warring with the Neptune-coloured sky.
He scoops gems with open palms,
lets them sink into her skin as he
stains her hair with sticks of diamonds.
Taking her [...]

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When Women Are Shaped Like Teapots

     You are not kidding when you tell your best friend that your new girl is shaped like a teapot.  “Her legs?” he says.  “Yes,” you say, “what of them?”  “Are they, you know, there?”  He chuckles to himself, mildly, as he tears a piece off his hot dog bun and eats it.  “They’re negligible,” [...]

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Owain & Haile IX

IX.
Across sixteen mondays,
Haile hears nothing of his voice, or of his dreams.
Instead she paints water colours by her mailbox,
lets her feet air without sandals,
and embroiders driveways
with sparks of dried-up grass.
But on the seventeenth,
she sees robins jumping from her window ledge,
and takes them as a blatant sign.
She dons the same white dress,
ties the old red sash [...]

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Owain & Haile VIII

VIII.
His father has been reborn a caveman,
with a static beard that’s grown too long to grow.
And his skin is coloured like the stamps,
like scales, like synesthetic keys upon a piano.
The two sets of wings are sculpted,
sit cocked against his antique dresser.
Every morning, he wakes his son
with a plea to be his Icarus:
he wants nothing but [...]

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Owain & Haile VII

VII.
It is the time again when the turnip flowers bloom,
and in the woods yellow pockets of their petals
make the floor seem like feathered birds.
It is the anniversary of the day
his mother shed her first scaly tooth.
As Haile waits for him, her dress is long,
white with a thick red sash
that cinches at her waist.
And her curls [...]

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Owain & Haile VI

VI.
He holds his Bible with shallow palms,
that shake like flat leaves in the sun.
It is but four months later when
his mother sleeps before him.
From her nostrils comes the sea—
but only the whitest of its foam.
Her nails are flecked with violet,
blue at the inside tips.
And as she scrapes them at his forearms,
they flake off into the [...]

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