By Peach Delphine

Breeze so thick you could

make a gravy of it, blue jay speaks into every room,
woodstork eyes lantana below the porch where lizards 
bask, bobbing brown heads, orange throat display, 
small sunsets closing, bird peppers red beaked,

 when she spoke

there was a shimmering, across vast distance, starlight, 
we stack words  like cordwood, wedged between trees,
we burn relentlessly, sleep in ash, leaf dreaming,

 dark mouth of the river, current

swallowing us, as light is split, variations shuffled,
a revelation, technical, precise, a great gathering 
awaits, an ever expanding  aggregate, we are buoyed 
by words that will not splinter,

hog wire fence, thicket beyond,

pines flake bark, slabs and sheets, leaves of a codex
 we once burned as if others were being written, 
as if demanding a carcass be transformed into sustenance 
doesn’t require a different prayer than was once recited,

woodpecker chisels grubs

from flesh of sand oak, crow in the pine speaks of weather,
rain measures itself against palmetto, squat in downpour, we remember we were never alone in the absence
of our companions, shore of fishbone, whistling wind,
fireflies incandescent, fullness of birdsong, with  dawn

cormorant fishes, gathering moonlight,
whelk conceals lightning,
oystercatcher has not yet
pried open invocation.

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Peach Delphine is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Former cook infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast and blackwater rivers. Delphine can be found on Twitter.

By Peach Delphine

A new surface settles, slow as sand in water, 
sediment of memory, days without sea or trees 
of pelicans, a great beam of wind tumbling across 
oyster beds, kicking up white caps, leaning on salt
marsh, shaking out black mangrove, buttonwood, 
as the being is not the body, shell, broken in time, 
becomes beach, she entered a record of names, 
all that could be remembered, never enough, she walked
into sunrise, sleepless, she listened to river, fish, tree,
she wrote into the space that became door, once opened, 
a word of ocean, narrowing tide of distance and absence,
if only for a moment we speak as waves, of shell, wind,
sky, what we each hold broken, the relentless motion
binding us to these forms, a balancing hand in time.

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Peach Delphine is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Former cook infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast and blackwater rivers. Delphine can be found on Twitter.