BIRDS OF VIRGINIA

What good is gossip without a method. What good is it without
music. What good
without being perched upon the edge of the bath unfurling in time
fishing for form
sounding wet pitcher plant mouth
opening making me insane
for sour juice I can suck through syntax
giving as it does nothing to me
deepening the miles
mirrored like movies flung with a fan and some light
scrambling a little diluting what water there already is
what more could it be.
Something radical. I come late as a pile
of song forsythia salt a pile of shells
broken bowls running clothes air conditioning units
river water bottled with love
pieces of lavender
gathered up sky seeming like catching fire
area of the bank of this river cut so loose
nothing
comes after kind of red no kind of coral. Might as well
take everything off here really to know this part the water
never does
come back like you think. Even dreaming takes practice
something floated when, wanting to seem clear on it, I let it,
when really all I have is crabby and fabricated the moon
I dump out.
A lightning bug gets in my wine a pink petal, a reflection.
Oysters with Texas Pete and tangerine. Sourdough wrapped loose in a dress,
cheese the same. Melon split with scissors
shaped
like a bird to share dripping through heat
coming in waves.
These hours
expanding around being given
these greens needing rinsing
these invitations, tingling,
the phone rings. I take the call out with boots on
through the back of the yard
sounding like clanging
like putting perfume
on like the radio needing something metal to put my hands around
what
keeps the hounds by themselves needs unwinding
sun dogs dapple themselves
all by themselves working out what we want to call love endlessly only
it ends at the county line I know needs breaking needs some light let in
to permeate the bottom the stretched out pool in the mountains has
the bottom of the inside
of a single honeysuckle tell me
how to fill a glass with it.
Does it refract the sun same as empties
in a ditch. Does it matter
when someone shows me a bird
reminding me of a coyote
rendering me surface enough

to unfold
like a friend biting the root first buttoning down the center with
one hand
my shirt to sleep in like another kind of devotion a valentine
a broadcast bending in time taking enough the house gets
hot
swells around me desolate as everything sweats out.
Tomato cut a mess being slid over my tongue more
cream
pushed over it more from the creek something
to pour rendering me lucid
more lucid
something with bubbles
something pointing with mint and sensitive to it
something like rose but more loose than ambitious
and not like a husband
something reaching me
located in thinking it possible noticing or deciding
light
still for minute
rising
field shaped so wide
I send you what I see undoing me. Something
with muscle and a grip to get
something godless
that god made tending with a one piece on cherry
chapstick
heaving back through something sleeveless
a pile of peonies.
Something about treating me to being excruciating,
dipping bread with a spoon
dipping cake
some salt on some pith from some
garnish all collapsible
as a hot tub
freakish as a stadium
loud having at it,
I snap what needs reading open sensing
from somewhere
I just thought you would be different when I met you
is the thing.
Jellyfish coming back in blooms, horseshoe crabs
in blue.
Someone wants to know what turns me on.

Double yolks in the morning. Ass.
Nothing else.

Caroline Rayner is a poet from Virginia. She wrote THE MOAN WILDS (Shabby Doll House, 2023).