preserving (edamame no. 1)

Edamame, oh! small, green thing you.
I carry around with me this severe cube
of the same viscosity and greyish hue
as sea-water.

Heavy-lidded I thought to you with
barrels of words already spoken and
gone to waste, all slicked with scum,
and floating somewhere off the muted coasts
of our several cities.

Nothing more to do except that labour
of taking the hell, dark horizon line
and forcing it ‘round my limbs of lack,
‘round our cyclinders of resignèd ghosts,
wound and knotted and trailing fine,
some almost-words.

I could make a clothesline, Japanese style,
with bamboo poles atop a fork, and
skewered bodies dancing the gusts
suggestive fabrics imitating those husks
that used to be where people were, but
this image is one of drying out letters,
my stiff, preferred, clinking forms.

Today and tomorrow and maybe when,
until another envisaged time, I’ll keep
them piled and arranged on shelves
(like jars of loquats, jars of soured leaves)
and I’ll shuffle them fro’, from week to week,
I’ll dust beneath their awkward curves, and
let them sleep ‘til their instructions arrive
delivered to this polished door.

brack | know | then | wait | salty | crude | nomination | haste | send | steal | walk | stay | hound | sentence | fell | mistake | later | oh! | fragile | now | cells | eyelids | explanations | how | watch | faith | practice | sound | edges | water | friend | bough | dangle | play | wonder | no? | possible | hurry | forget | repel | parcel | matter | eat | whirl | tangy | upset | quiet | girl.