THE SNAIL

I sat in the soft of her elbow

and baled her armpit hair

I sat in the soft of her knee

drilled kisses under her foot

she didn’t wipe my trail

it hardened, it wrinkled

she didn’t crush me!

though it felt weird under her foot

*

I dunk my dum dum

in tears, a snail infinitely small

so his friends

when you love someone

it’s a canal

of yesterday on




CAVE SWIFTLETS

you call me by phone

you saw me on rat hay cam

jumping, landing on coiled copper

bringing something to someone

like a criminal in a private territory

I address you in three languages

my grandfather’s pearls

a couchette wagon

our life of thirty equal years

a woman in a field of sunflowers

a brunette with these flowers

here, flower-loving girl


THE OVER AND OVER VIDEO

you burn water out of a love-physic

you’re shells that secure small beach dogs

you make a stone tart and put rocks on it

you take the rocks off to make a mark

I write without was and love has no time

I write no time and the pyramids shake

I flip the sky and the birds are lentils

I wash the dishes

our mattress inflates to an ideal rigidity

our backs swell from a swim in dark glacier water

sometimes I desire a soul with a body around it

sometimes the other before the other



*

Zan de Parry has been published variously in print and online, most recently Dostoevsky Wannabe’s Dundee, West Branch and BathHouse, and is forthcoming in Unsaid 8, TABLOID 13 and the chapbook HENNIE from Berlin-based Tabloid Press. He teaches poetry workshops in Lansdale public schools, is co-founder of KEITH LLC, and is at work translating Anatol Prasicky from the Ukrainian with Demyan Hryciw. 


The photograph is from Leif Holmstrand’s “Holy Helpers” series.