WHEN YOU SPOT THE SHORE, THE PALM


proves angry. When you spot the palm
moving the scripture of black flies

the shore carries the shore

to you and your injury. When you

cut the world we are in
the same world for a moment crawls
into each leg’s stronghold,
breaks the tendon
the hull

Ships on land
sleep like turkeys in trees. When I blow north
they scatter across the treehouse
knock the lantern over. Lobes
from a sacrificial branch

When I
stir the golden wattle
in the white pot
husks burn harder than I do. Black
flies coagulate and burn
to the wrist

I release the scripture from your skin
climb into my branches
the solar plexus of a small child

Ear lobes covered in flies
the mouth is still wet, whatever
sand coughs on the shore
there is more in the hair
of a five year old

Blood steadying in the crown, when

you hear a guttural in the sand, a nest
of diamantine eggs, a ripe forelimb
tripping the drift, bend

down for I am gaining sky, resistant, hardened
over me and I am under a crown
of prayer-like atoms

A person cannot be
a stronghold but a child
can— you re-name what you injure

better, worse, or accurate? Cloud-friction is
a Velcro sound





THE MASTER BRANCH

melting

into a palette

tugged over the ditch

The spool is confused

the spool

withstanding its use

to pin

the children

elevated

as tugboats the shore

cannot feel the sea

no

no, not at all