Woody Divers Love Planet Libra
She said we love
the speculative nature
of thingness in penny red
a movement of fingers
in a line of seesaws
and beeswax
If it’s enough
to cave among the shy
repeating scarlet
and braiding suns
better to embrace
an expansive niche
under all those photons
to be green and dangerous
that’s all I can say
it’s light if it's light
or nothing
Syllables Are Romantic
There is no one now
in the script
above the grass
My arms around a tree
your sweater
on my ankles
a figure from the canopy
overhead when the face
of the canopy
divides the tree
*
Moon is a perfect
fifth wheel
I wish a hem of
now I edge yet
unnoticed
walking mums
runner hands open
I open out to the blow
below zero
*
Someone wonders
it’s elegiac
to think about time
Someone magenta
interrupts herself
in the off-space
of feminine nouns
being unfamiliar
with eros
and edges
*
See a thrush
of summer braids
waxwings candled
in a bundle of trees
See the mind
as something similar
and pulled apart
like tacit arches
flyers more distant
in a pavilion
*
The face of the moon
evicted the moon
of her body
either hummingbird
or the thing itself
or lemon balm
working spoons
into patchwork
sweet line of heat
hatcheting what’s left
*
Helium helps
pull air apart
from paradox
moves liquid
into an index
What pulls you
from praying mantis
what asks the difference
between mercury
and current
slip and circle
*
See penny whistle
cream golden sun
everything in a boundary
and what’s not
It’s a blossom
that accumulates
Every pencil in California
every hip
between curtains
of the sea and the sea
Juliana Leslie is the author of More Radiant Signal (Letter Machine Editions, 2010) and Green Is for World, which is just out from Coffee House Press. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA.