I remember you as a hallucination,
bitter dregs at the bottom
of a Turkish coffee cup, as a body-ache
rolling out from my sinews in a sigh
of sweet dreams recollected, for a moment burning―
you are the boiling that rears its swooning head
to pierce bubbles,
that relief in clammy touch of rubbing alcohol on metal.
A vision, glistening:
someone in a black cloak, arguing with, enticing me
―here are the grinds, lemon-rinds of memory: an aftertaste
of coffee; an over-kissed, blistered mouth that exhales
lusty breath across a mosquito-harvest,
rising in sweet delirium.
Most of all a burnt smell of magnolia, unrequited,
wafting up.
Tashakkur
I give thanks for daffodils along my windowsills
sing in gratitude for my awareness,
the way it spirals above my crown then
down into my neo cortex, out my eyes, I give thanks
for this candle in my cranium’s cave, for hanging
clusters of wisteria, this mind, the litany of days
that continue: I press palms together for the excess
of fuchsia in a single petal,
for fractals of flowers, bouquet-swirls of lemon,
cerulean and magenta
starbursts of petunias, branches of cherry blossoms
resembling white arms of nebulas
in the iris of my imagination
I am grateful for purple clusters of lavender
and mock orange, perfuming the rosy-hued
hours that turn
evenings into night… mostly I sing praises
for thousands of pink flamingoes who take
flight in my chest, when reading poems by Odysseus Elytis.
