3 Poems
Simon Kindt
in which orpheus and eurydice steal a couple bottles
(i)
a half quart of rum later
and orpheus is flat on the floor
head in her lap, all grin and spin
of world around him
eurydice (who is the world)
strokes the little mollusc
of his ear
traces the outline of his mouth
slides a finger in between his lips
and curls to stroke the palate
she thinks: how strange it is to be
a body
how strange and full of holes
(ii)
orpheus still grins and so
she presses fingers further
eyes the pulse now drumming
in the throat
wonders if there might be
a way to push herself inside
and swiftly be the boy
till boy eyes flare
as she presses
just an inch too far
and chokes him
(just enough)
(iii)
she holds her fingers up against his gaze
and watches him
thinks of how a thought
(like life)
comes swift
as swallows flying
through a window
(‘have you ever wished
that you were something other
than a boy?’
‘do you mean, like, a girl?’
‘i guess, or maybe like a bird’)
thinks how words are wind
come whistling
through
oh weep and weep for orpheus (and eurydice is dead)
(i)
orpheus says to eurydice :
when you were in the world
i should have known better
should have known about the empty space
where / the problem / always is
that a body cannot fill another body
that a lack is only ever lack
should have known that joy is taxed
and (like a little fist of pills)
is measured out
and swallowed
(ii)
it goes like this :
it is 3 AM and orpheus
(afraid to go
where she has gone)
is grateful
for the ipecac
(iii)
orpheus says to eurydice:
(my love)
you are gone
and i wake underwater
spread against the sand
and drifting silt
spine broke and rib cage
listing pieces on the floor
(my love)
there is nothing more
to me than language
rotten as monoxide
boiling in the blood
as a body rising to the light
popping as it goes
(iv)
eurydice says:
dear boy (my love)
in dreams i wish
we were a field
and horses
that we had stitched
the earth with thunder
that we might have moved
beneath the blue
dear boy (small noise
between my hands -
blue eye of my wounded love)
i think about what happened
to the sky and drift
the memory of you
to water
orpheus makes camp at styx while eurydice (a ghost / a ghost) watches him and says:
(i)
come morning and the crows
arrive like omens
you wake to the sky
and drift to being
light reaches in then through
the gaps of you as shadow
the bronze of you
unfolds a little space
between the world
and what it’s not
(ii)
how strange to think
that myth will overtake us
that your name will be
the name for grief
and for little children
lost
you, small sound
i sleep inside of
little song
i hold against my tongue
little ghost
returning home
(iii)
these things i wished
for you (my love) -
blue sky to stand inside of
some kids to see it through
a field / a field / a field / a field
a breeze to take your ash
simon kindt is a father, teacher and poet which are just three different attempts at being human. In 2014 he published air / tide in collaboration with Chlöe Callistemon, and published the verse novella no revelation in 2015. Also in 2015, wreck / age, written in collaboration with Bill Moran, was published by Alien Mouth. He is also an editor of pressure gauge, an online journal of poetics and art. He can be contacted at skind4@gmail.com.