Sharon Coleman

Surface
“I am the thought on the bath in the room without mirrors”
				—Nadja
Clear ripples 
over feet, legs
knees just 
bent, small 
hair and hipbone 
a circle 
where the belly 
subsides or arms 
press worn 
porcelain, shoulders 
shiver sea-
borne hair
I, a dream 
or judge, dip 
in, warm
water
reach up— 
A death 
has webbed 
the house,
covered
its mirrors, and
this room 
observes
a buoyancy,
my breathing 
away 
the silence
who was. 



unlit insomnia
strange as i am to earth’s new heat, birds 
warble outside the window of my unlit 
insomnia. their adrenalin joy courses along 
daylight a hemisphere away. they mate past 
midnight on a planet whose atmosphere 
wanes while its body’s heat waxes. strange 
as i am to my body’s new heat, i float clumsy 
in june bird trill. birds warble through 
my unlit insomnia as i’m seared into clay  
then sleep a dust-filled song of tomorrow.

its covers open to full wingspan     until the pages flutter       in the bay winds
spine bent back on itself	book, its breast of words	   flits a snowy
plumage 	quivering eucalyptus leaves     oceans inhale           egrets bend 
past gravity          head pulled back         two wingbeats a second       you bend 
into slow wings    a body of new rules	rub your arms into a tensile neck 
wade mudflats           eye an appetite of sky		stretch arms 
into weightlessness         yellowed feet rock-bound           silky strands ripple 
with a bay tide           washing every word away            foot prints write 
the shoreline          as you dance a bird that stalks     a fish    its powerful beak     
your words       preen and jab        along wetlands        eyes squint hunger
into clouds      air in every bone      regret trails feathery      beyond flight