speaking as if I am bent / these
are the knuckles of late august
bullying what is left of softened
grains in their nascent, on earth
an Iberian fen is my focus
I make too much room for fire
where my ancestors spared life
a peninsula saving the sea,
the years are borne of draught
and sun / in knots, carrying
myself into the past through
my own cheek, squeezed into
palmfuls of warm black fruit
to build me up from scratch
I know them / from the heat
that hounds the way a lover
takes settlement around the
bougainvillea / budding but
bent, this body sunken into
how we hear gospels,
to be eaten whole, mouths
of a wilde morning waiting
