Poems from Timewave Zero, by Rebecca Lu Kiernan.

 

Perfect Crimes

There was a letter in the pocket of a raincoat
A drunk, apocalyptic version of me wrote.
I burglarized your lighthouse to remove it.
It would be sad and difficult to prove it.

I killed your pink seahorses with a truffle spoon
And mated your shrill, foul-mouthed parrot with a loon.
I have seven alibis for that alleged night
And calm, time-bent selves immune to irises so bright.

I am going to return to steal more things.
Laughter, Europa, Io, Jupiter's rings.
Do you feel dizzy? Need a pill?
I'm taking gravity. Hold still.

 

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Hazard Signs

Time's arrow bends As my blind obsession
Permeates your secret life.
Incalculable chemical reaction
Between the long vowels
Of your sweat-soaked pleasure
And my fetished-washed
Sublimations.

The way you ache for me
Some aperture
Between confession and repeat offense,

I know

What the avalanche must whisper
To the snow.

 

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The Case Against Chaos

We were promised
Trick candles and red velvet cake,
Midnight fireworks,
Champagne in cave-crystal flutes.
You wore a Tom Ford tuxedo in abyss blue.
My transparent gown of glitter
Made promises the night could not keep.

Giant screens showed a split-screen view
Of asteroid and missile.
Bach filled the silence.
No one will ever know
What ruined the math.

In a flash,
Our skeletons fused in cognizant embrace.

Had I more time,
I like to think I would have told you,
Nothing of me was true
And I destroyed every universe
In which we would not meet
Just to spend these seven years
Entangled with you.

 

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Gods

Because the train of time is crashing
I cannot estimate
How long we kept our deviant math
Inside the seventh imposter stone.

Secret physics club of two
Looping the arrow of time
Into a perfect cherry stem knot.

Why is the world so panicked
That the future will fail to unfold
Into its boring habit?

I will meet you
In that honeysuckle hour
Of a sunlit kiss
That bent the bluebells
And the wolfkiss orchids.

Darling,
I am breathless
To turn the seventh stone.
Our love can never be
A creature so cannibalistic
As memory.

We are already Gods