Aniseed in sand

Comes on and quickly: A thin worm slips sylphlike

             into the inner ear and spirals to line the cochlea

                          in coil, rests, bloats and distends, widens cavity



walls, bloats down to the throat and my head cocks

             under its weight. My evening shadow clutches, clasps

                          a tuft of hair pulling me toward her, serving



as further proof that shadows want flesh to buckle slump, stretch

             horizontal to sow substance where there is none. Especially up-market,

                          up high and uphill, this soil swills envy and its variations.



The torque saddles my spleen and my legs move like crabs,

             corybantic and feral to stand in for gravity and the plane.

                          *Dear shade, dear daemon, do not muster, do not envy.*



With this motion I descend, towed. A shipping heir

             gifts me a bouquet. Tucks one sanguine rose behind my ear.

                          My teeth tear at the rose-tops. The pluck not mine, I cannot stop.



There is nothing precious about the periphery and

             molars are equally useless if they fall out. *Let go please**

*                          *shadow sister watch me swear you one wisdom tooth.*



Unstead unbalanced I bare my rose-stained teeth

             with foreign fury, spit the petals and hurl the stems. Descending, nearing

                          the port now. *Please loosen your grip we are *one *you* one *I*.



The shipping heir follows. Asks a merchant seaman for

             aniseed boiled in water and left on the stovetop of Commerce.

                          The seaman asks his nursing wife who asks



what for. Is this heart-ache or is this worm-

             wood lodged under or has it reached the ear.

                          White linen is most beautiful stained with attar



and umber—when it speaks for itself—for what unstained

             is ever permanent? On this ashy shore I have no resolve or

                          resolution. Drive is driven. *We must hurtle together regardless*.



*Our history is express, likewise our en-

*             *rapture. *Respect’s deckhand once carried a para-

                          sol, which has since rusted over in the aromatic



nothing we will soon be glad to remember

             with clarity. *Sister Anise, sister shadow, I am spinning.*

                          *Retrograde. In sand. Crab-like legs one needle.*



With the three spins before the gyroscope falls

             its needle traces my name in the ash-sand.

                          When the rim touches down my orb-skull cracks.



Captive liquid falls in tears, which fill the cursive:

             a self-portrait too sad to admit agency and yet

                          this is a flavor I have wrung myself. A flavor



for which I have obtained a Protected Designation

             of Origin which means what I choose will choose

                          to swell inside me and it always tastes how it was made.



This flavor is black but brilliant, the incan-

             descent paragon of lustre and forgetting

                          *taste my parsley of enmity, an-*



*imus, anisum.* I taste acquired

             like black licorice or leucorrhea.

                          Like ouzo in brine,* I drink you,* like:



Umbilical. Milk that’s pressed from stalks.

             Umbellifer. Milk of noontime, milk that calls me back.

                          Umbra. Milk of malice, milk that soothes no aches.



A wild wheel leaking prone like spleen: seed and sown.