Poetry by Peach Delphine

               Tony Webster CC



​
  -a forest of summoning a sea of renunciation-

How easily I set flame to this misbegotten body,
accelerant ever on my tongue, chine of wind,
 cutting edge of utterance, Granny said,
 "you've an arsonists hands" 
as if burning were a lesser art than what the idle
 bystander, spectator, can craft, plausible deniability 
belongs in a grave, shallow, attended by turkey buzzards.

We have defined ourselves by blood
in the mouth, bladed words buried
in the darkness of rib and sternum,
tongue split upon the wind, we speak twice,
each word stacked with meaning
a non mechanical articulation of breath.

The word moves as the tongue,
bones of karst, old cypress muck bound
stone heavy in the mouth of remorse,
to swallow as an act of acceptance,
sometimes kneeling as an act of love, 
sometimes for cash or reckless abandon,
we never thought our shrouds were woven
 of past, all our garments  time soaked and salt stained.

Flesh, a page of inscriptions carved 
into fluidity, having repeatedly opened 
this surface so the darkness settled 
in my lungs could feel the light of a day 
without despair, of stars moonbright, sea dazzled.

Heavy needle felling our seams,
cloth of verdure, warp and weft of birdsong 
and leaf, of flight, of the motion that defines,
relentless breathing we summon each day, 
unexpectedly we are survivors, held firm
by shell and sand, angular and barefoot, 
wrist turned inwards, sunrise pulsing
across the marsh, daylight shattering on wave.

Granny said "you've a girl's hands"
so did the first man who took me,
they were as one in their need of suffering,
when the dirt swallowed them the sky
was not unfeathered, wind still sang
of open water, the only salt upon my face
of the sea, hands stretched out in supplication 
for the hardness of waves, for inundation
of those who stand unrepentant
 upon the firm and solid shore of bone and ash,
 not yet swallowed by a sea of memory, not yet 
submerged in darkness, wrapped in the cold
 of time's ending, nameless in utter finality.

​
​

Peach Delphine is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Obsessed with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast. Former cook dedicated to food of the Gulf coast.

---