Bronwyn Carter

After Rimbaud


The night is dyed blue by the slow effacing ocean of you.
A crawl of days and integers; of barium sky asserted through branch limbs;
of lichens of sunlight more leaf-like than leaves
now making way for the order of things.

I lose myself in blades turning backwards
bleeding onto my hands as boats float landwards.
This bath water stains, insects come biting:
steel mantis and their creator lying beside me.

At the easel my world is tetrahedron.
Mouths open like ashtrays, gape as the train sways.
I paint sheets: my mind is travelling over every permutation,
every exponential equation:
troika elemental, atomic, rutilant, a cipher.
No sign of ghosts, gods or demons;
no need for generalities;
the information of my flesh, this body, after everything, reacts.

It’s a wormhole I slip through only rotating to pull blue.
How good it feels to raise a comb; to prick my ears! Drunken bees,
I download sap: the file undreamed.
In the star of flowers, mist thick with grasses
we film everything only averting our eyes from the burning towers

and the ink bleeds all night.