White Print Inc

Derick Burleson

Do you remember when
we used to lie facing
each other head to hip
hungry for not nectarine
but a taste of the juices
flowing from the other
to become pure hunger
pure black cherry held by
the other’s mouth where
words come from lips
tongue fricative glottal
two bent question marks
raspberry sliced cantaloupe
inverted joined moving
at the mouth the center
as if for that time we
could at last abandon
bodies and become the other
in tangerine in tongue lip
in language voice mind
and feeling plum and sun
for as long as this goes on.

Derick Burleson

There’s a galaxy inside each blueberry
and blueberries carpet the tundra to every
horizon the sun sweeps around never setting
in summer’s endless afternoon and mosquitoes
blacken the air each June with a hunting hum
seeking blood and more blood so they can breed
and torment the herds of caribou still migrating
ancestral paths and new paths too since it seems
everything is changing changing sunlight
by the second and minute in a cycle which has
remained mostly constant in change since
the planet achieved its tilt. Meanwhile.

Derick Burleson

She could have loved you
there on the beach weaving
toward the bluff half moon
waxing sunset and sunrise
so close together you walked
through them basalt lined
with quartz wave rounded
and the sand between each
stone. Out there moon pulled
tide onto the beach then off
it while starfish and clams
fed in the broad intertidal zone.
We could have kept going
around the bluff and on
toward Anchor Point. Otters
rode the waves in rafts
of themselves home in icy
water. A long night out
and quick morning walking
in moonlight and sunlight
down the beach and back again.
How much time do we have?
King salmon piling up at the inlets
of their home rivers hooked
blushing now ready for the season’s
run in that moment of finding
after all the phosphorescent
beings beneath your separate
skins mountains and glaciers
too beautiful to live beneath.
You could die of beauty here.

Derick Burleson

You take another into yourself
and it begins a heart shaped leaf
lovevine innocent purple white
blossoms and oh how it grows
binds the railroad tracks to ties
parallel to the gleam of vanishing
binds horizon to sky more than
the erotic warblings of meadowlarks
vines into a moan in sleep in dream
green heart-shaped leaves invading
the smelt of iron and alloy and wheat
waves of wheat as far as you can see
from not a hill but a slight rise in
the prairie wind coming through
you weaving the seed heavy plain
into cello an etude in one note
and then another waves within your
body seeds transformed to toothy air
through the alchemy of yeast foam
and food opening into another’s body
lovevine and innocent purple white
blossoms morning glory convulsion.

Derick Burleson

That was the real thing
the first time there is
always a first time we’d
been waiting so hot for
now this tent the storm
naked raw lighting us blue
as bare as we’d ever been
sun heated air rising on
convection currents colliding
with the cool air above
into that sublime terror
the boy felt rowing toward
the night cliff in a stolen
boat. Mosquitoes blackening
the blue tent drunk on our
breath hungry for our blood
for the blood of the child
we were making in the storm
wind within wind outside
the rain’s angled slash
lightning and crash coming
close wind gust leaves
ripped from the willow since
oh yes this was as real
and original as it gets naked
blue the first time making our.