Turtles watch the kite hawks like steel-helmeted
machine gunners scanning the sky for enemy

aircraft. Kite hawks rise into clouds the colour
of dissolving thoughts. The relationship between

them is less one of predator and prey and more
that of night and day, each animal absorbed in blue

worlds whose depths stretch into an expanse
beyond all knowing. Across the harbor, the adult

entertainment district lies dormant as it waits for
the night to ignite the neon lights along the long

road to Paradise and the huge cartoon women
on posters peeling away from its walls. Live Girls! 

ソープランド! Free Parking! A lone fishing boat
trawls the mirror-smooth lake beyond the concrete

breakwater like a trope in search of meaning. Look
at the time: this is the hour when the moon and sun

are both visible above the same horizon line— 
when the sky is the water and the water is the sky.

You’d feared for me, my voice falling so far
away from itself that it might never come
back—how could I be at such remove
with my familiar body pressed into yours?

And when I woke to the sound of the long
vowel threading now I lay me down to sleep
to my primal scream, the face distorted
with tender panic wasn’t yours until it was.