Michael Diehl, Thar She Blows
drip, drip
I. that throat
of bubbling
venom
transcended
through
your
eyes,
enfeebles you, blinds
me
like
a
bat. for all the dark and unlimited,
neither
one
of
us
can fly as we see.
II. there is a
picture
in
the unlit
bath-
room: a
drawing of white chalk; a
dust-
ing of shadows and
streams
of un-
even fog;
screams
of
children disappearing
around
a street
corner
where the
night-spit
limousine
rolls on black paper.
III. i’ve seen you
enscarlet
your
toe
nails
here.
i’ve seen you brush
down your hair.
i’ve seen you
scrape your
legs
of
memory and
night and
blood: your
legs
of bile and
cream and
achilles tendons
shaped
down to
the chiseled points of spears.
IV. that first trickle
of
water edging
over
the
tub, could soon
avalanche
the
side
of the sun
where it
burns your hand
on the
linoleum:
where
i
left
it moist with the
new moon, red and calm
and
unpainted.
_____________
Livio Farallo
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
This deep and charged composition takes a moment, a habit and opens it in a thousand ways. The bathing routine, the grooming, in which we are alone with ourselves, the before and after, the treatments and the makeup, that uneven fog that powders and blurs the sight. A sense of anticipation, typical of preparing for a night out. It is the moment in which the doubling takes place: a part of us will come out while another, the unpainted one, will remain to count the drips from the tap.
However you see it, whichever side you take, neither one of us can fly.