THE ECSTACY OF FLOCKING
By Alexis Kirke
gulls like white wasps
swarm a black canvas
soon the sun is a mist
on the ocean's photography.
*
he said:
"_we_ are seagulls" and
"feeling your fingernail
slipping between
the two white feathers
just near my triangle-bony
like-shoulder, is lovely". I rub
in and out and my fingertip
patterns catch ends of the
fibres that make up his wings.
Then I slip my hand in, up to my
wrist, so his wing bone encircles
it. Feel the stroke of the down
on my whitening forearm.
Now winter approaches - and
wings hit the sea like a
tiger's fur rises in
winds of good odours - he's
landing himself between ripples
of Gulf streams that flow
in a vein through my underarm,
where his finger slips around
searching like digging a hole
in an animal
*
_His_
wings are an engram, a seagull
that shoots itself over a page.
wings, are their own DNA
they are gulls in themselves,
store a pattern of flight
from spine to splice.
Wings are Down, fill up a cover
where hot bars of morning
are focused by curtain-cracks
over the bed:
the rush of the sun rising
over a city too hot for seagulls.
*
He said
"Your throat and your mouth
were an inside-out syringe
injecting your stomach with
white birds."
*
The complexification of gulls
has two parts. Gulls are vectors -
constantly turning and merging
in subspaces of their own choice.
The real part is flying in heaven;
and out on the cliffs
the imaginary part is catching its
fish with the flock.
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