BARTER
In the night market, mile high: skewered
parrotfish, Marase peppers, the hearts
of other people. It took time to register
that she’d gone and given me up for the hunt.
No one told me we were done with giving.
It had become sure as the morning piss.
I didn’t go quite as far as I could have,
but it would do. I gassed up for the East,
where I traded dry for wet, blue for cloud,
her for solitude meant to prove a point.
KNOCKOUT
When next I saw you, the wreck of your lip
was darkening by degrees, then black
as a star field and deep as your wish for her
violence. At the temple, the barest swell, silken
and glimmering like jellyfish, promising
you aren’t delicate. You’ll bear down on those
bullet shapes. You will dote until they turn
meat rot green, then golden.
Glint Literary Journal 