Still - Uganda

Rights of Chance

"your hair swam the pools of the air
and somewhere next door the woman with the red hat fills her tea cup to overflowing and
though she doesn't know why
lets it spill sienna across the table cloth"
-kevin rolly

You are Wind

"though i pay little attention to these things
written on charts what i read is your skin
that took its marks before me
and your hair that never waves farewell but always hello hello i made it how are you?

Your girl's slip like the lip of a valley of wind
carrying with it the scent of things i cannot see...
sense memory of the sea and a perfumed jewel box
given to you by your mother the day you were born.

A forest exhales through fragile painted lips
and the seeds of a faithful sewer settle upon my tongue"
-kevin rolly

Winter

"Winter's come

a blanket of mercy
to be thrown over us
and all the wrongs we
suffered upon each other

I know we are seen and
everything is seen

a requiem candle set
at the foot of my bed
sputters through the night
through the winds of this season
that I pray may
finally silence this longing
that in its own season
has rendered these fields
into ash

so let the silence come

shut the blinds for the long nights ahead
turn the lights off
the music down
and empty this heart finally
like a tea cup grown cold

You who see....
may I forget her name by spring..."
- kevin rolly

Prayers for Border Crossings

"but there have been nights
with the endings of fingers and i
smell the fire you lit across the tracks

across the vows
and though you've long gone
into a country whose hills
i cannot see
in my mind's eye
I can still see the beckoning glance
lit by a match strike...
hear the sound of you in the mountain shower
as I wrote the secret note

and there on a glass between us
crescent scimitar kiss of breath
for my bordertown heart
as the train of warning screamed east
and the land swallowed you like rain"

silver emulsion oilgraph 7x5