Introducing Chris Noman Part 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A U B A D E, O C E A N G R O V E

We sat on the beach at high tide
when you finally turned to me, your hands buried
in the sand, asking, like a child, if I saw how far out you went,
the spray

of the Pacific becoming tears upon your worn face.
With a broken shell I drew a white line
down the brown skin of your shoulder,
and said nothing.

Tonight the beach is still. My clothes are scattered on the sand.
Slowly the waves come forward, and the remote lights
of the coast tremble
across the water; red, and deep amber. If once you
could have seen yourself;

the lone figure in my dream

diving so swiftly through the waves
I believed the four seas gathered to ferry only you.
Sometimes, in the dark, I hear you, Brandon,
calling my name, wanting me to follow———

I lie awake
and believe more than anything you are holding me again;
how on nights like this, we’d lie side by side, not moving,

our bodies uncovered in the dark, waiting for a sign;
the taste
of salt on your palm as you covered my mouth,
the last desperate cries gradually silenced by flesh———

Beyond the row of tide markers, the sun rises. Assassins
scale the carved rock at the base of the promontory, and the
waves mount, relentless against the shattered breakers.
You understand, I never wanted either of us
to be saved———
the sky strangely light at this hour, the gulls overhead,
cryless in the wind.

 

 

 

 

UNBORN CHILD

How quiet you are, how still——
I think you must be waiting.

Sometimes
I believe you were always there

in my body; maybe like the way light
enters our eyes
and hides in us forever———

It’s the closest you’ll ever get
to having a soul: when a child’s dead
inside you.

Last night I dreamed someone
fucked me as I slept.

For all I know, it wasn’t a dream;

I pretended to sleep, maybe I never
opened my eyes———

What death claims it abandons.

Look at me. What do you see in me
that is not surrender? I am
ruined. We both know

I’d give my body up to you again.