DANIELLE GRILLI

This is what love is:
skin of stained glass
bright prisms painting
ballet of arm
prayer of leg
language of hip
cheekbone

I await word and rhythm

This is what love is!

Balled Fist
Red Fingers
.. Split Vein
Sentience

Your Love:

all spit and fury
swell of lip

I await kiss and breath
length and morning
the upshot
your great redemption

Everyone understands

this is no small descent

just the final burn
the single reckoning
a promise

Testament: A Poem in Seven Days

ONE

I have shredded all my pretty dresses:

Red Silk......Indigo Sequence......Silver Lilies

..... for necklace of twine

..... Twist of rope braided to a delicate end

TWO

In her bed, in her bed in the hospital grandma can't speak and she can't drink and she can't
move and she's got tubes and machines and monitors and she can't say it, but she looks at me
that way and I know, I know that fear, that possession of pain and time and weakness, the
fear of atrophy, of the mind that can't think straight no more, of the heart that weeps and
weeps down like rain, spins its devastating apocalypse like an absolution, of the fear that
carries our worlds away.

She's in her bed and she looks at me that way, fearful that way, speechless that way, and I
know, I know, I know she's begging- I know she's begging god to take her back, take her back
to the way it used to be, to the way it was when life was a definition of movement, when life
carried a dance and a hope for more, more

Together, we settle into the taking

THREE

How to still a rocking chair despite rootlessness?

How to hang this weave of memory, iridescent, close to sky?

What will I wear to this party?

Bloodied Fingers..... Ruby Lips..... Stretched Spine

..... There is no one left to ask

FOUR

There is no grace here--no grace in this fragile tether of mind--this soft de-evolution

I am not counting madnesses

I am not counting madnesses

in vein of silver leaf.. twist of fingerprint.. palm

I am dreaming
I will lie here

FIVE

Today I numbered pills: 22-49-68-83. I will wait. I will wait for 365 and then, and then,
and then only the dissipation, even for me--child of earth, child of stormy river--even for me.

SIX

Whoever said this world was calculable? Burned down to three and one and four--to an
indisputable tangibility-- when all I can see is a palpable fragmentation:

White sun dazzling off a billion bodies of dust, gold petal, pale vein and this, this, the indigo
pollen lifted by breath of wind into unexpected existences--unforeseeable deaths and births
where beat of heart, exhale, are no longer sentient operations, each just an alternate refuge
of shadow, another shallow escaping

SEVEN

I think I am missing, I think I am missing something- bolt of sun, pale light in this lurch toward
silence, this choked descent as I beg for an ignorance, as I beg for the unmitigated mind to rise
up and carry me back to the diaphanous place: to the deliverance: thoughtless, quiet.

I think I am missing something. I think I am missing. Tell me. Tell me.

Crack

This is the seat of?
This is the lashing: Wild Ocean

Swimming, we peddle arms and legs
against shattered movements
of drop and blue drop.. white swells

This is where we begin:

the first reeling breath, desperate howl
white light, cold hands, finger print
smeared across belly, spine, root of neck

..... the only invariable commencement

And the rest? The rest!

Aah? My Friend
it is all lurch and stagger
push of limbs and brain
through fit and start
Brief graze of exhale
across lips, twist of mind

Knowing

We cannot hope to recapture
fists and teeth
toes and pink nipples

The first
The beginning
The feral shock
Simple need
Behind us

Not here
Not now
Not this time
but Later

Later

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