the catalonian review

from the tubes onto the canvas but sometimes also onto

my own skin, coating my body

like a brined bird in the oven. It dries

like sea-salt and falls through my lenses

blurring the potted plants that I tend in your absence.

This breath held in the lung is given to you in gratitude,

thankfulness for your happiness and my face against your knees

            in a dream that I had

            before I even knew you.

Your breaths are true. The cotton sings beneath your ribs to prove it.

In that month I asked you,

Where is Italy?

Where is the Rue de Montaigne?

Where is our gravity?

Where is the cutlass?

Where is SoHo?

Where is Cèzanne?

Are you my benefactor?

and I asked them to leave Morocco for awhile.

The smell of that place stung our nostrils. Sometimes

we wept but other times just sat by the door singing.

I raise my hands above my head in sheer cottons to think about where you are

—I hardly know anymore.

                                             I believe that you are in the sea.

I dreamt that a lion covered in snow with purple flowers yawned. 

On his tongue was the sea and in that sea was you.

It might have been the Mediterranean but I’ve never been

I was jealous. I scooped it all up and drank you.