SIOBHAN ON LOVE

after the fish supper
sips
a tulip shaped flute
of bubbly,
and sits on the marble flat.
she is-
"So happy- (for the bride)
but its not for me-
the ring-thing,
the till death do us part
________________thing."

not for her:
she's traded
virgin white
to live forever
her coloratura
folds of cherry red tulle
and a sheer show of dark knee,
slender calves
in black English
stockings
snap-crisp
tab collar
(like sanderling wings)
her brooch trimmed
en bleu et rose et rouge.

and sitting with Siobhan
real & in the sun
here
is the same as knowing
in heart, in whole
that she just may be
(green eyes & all)
giddy in a sudden eternity
she understands
as simple as seeing,
simple as
the freckle
on her face.

she tongues another sip of bubbly:
a thief
of queens,
a precocious goldsmith
hammering
beauty
from here-alive happiness
& swinging high heels
(gold-banded:
gold stolen
from the crosiers
of dying popes).
her hair:
amber-shimmer
prize of pirates
coins:
the color of kings.
Its true (and its her),
a sheen alive
here In the hot sun:
her very giving-
living
heated colours:
warm golden gifts of Aurora.


SIOBHAN'S FÉDORA

Later, over a dry wine,
or oysters (like an epilogue,
or an icing that sharpens
the tongue of a novice,
tangy like a boy's first martini),
"no ordinary hata, this be
a trilby, got that, yank?"
short (or justly lyric) for what
you call fedora, derived
from the opera Fédora
by one Victorien Sardou:
(figures, fashion, French, fetish)
yet it fits, give credit for what
it's doing: the hat is the dialect
declaring a hot geometry
about the skin
like gray light
limns black magic
with your mascara
felt, best, in harsh light,
it conjures nervous
locations, muscled theatrics,
a flowering chorus (or is it
crocus?) marking the subtle
space where lithe fingers
hardly grip the brim
but do, must, the slightest
adjustment's a secret sign,
that translates the ensemble
into the bandstand's cue
to shatter the silence
as the curtains lift again.


SIOBHAN'S APHORISMS

Siobhan, an acclaimed scholar of Pandora
carried on about the aphasia
that comes over the ascetic walker
who stumbles upon a bronze surf
and feels the very skin of his feet
pinched on the stretch of sand,
as he scans the briny dunes
pocked by the sand dollars.

she was eloquent on the techne of an aphorism-

"The aphorist is she who has stopped expecting answers
and replaced the question mark (that belongs at the end
of every distilled expression) with a period, creating
the kind of declaration that shatters the dulled heart
over the happy ridges of a nervous brain."

Such as Fear is how a body doubts itself
on the verge of a fictive vanishing.

Every cop-out comes disguised as prudence.

Forethought is a mercenary
sold to the cause of literalism.

To live means to be in
love with doubt,
acting without forethought,
sure of the vanishing.

-Tim Keane


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