I've still got aubergine on the brain. Among other things.

THE DRESSMAKER



In the window under the beak of 

the singing machine said

beautiful creature begets particolored

unnamed histories, stitching

strips cerulean & aubergine, the cleft

of night's erasure in the eyes of

the gasmask, the machine's fallen

F where fingers orbit the pneumatic

needle's thrum, crooked lines or

zigzag strokes knit contrapuntal

possibilities; coy, bespectacled before

the mannequin's glass pallor, pulls

off her arms gently, sings behind

a stilletoed emblem.



You've the right to remain 

aghast, now I want to believe 

in simple things: the window's glow,

shoulderblades, Arachne's last stand

given way to webbed silence, this

last gasp of something unreckoned, 

grasping at quick silk, the present's

unspeakable cuneiform, a silver thread

for these nights, this high

lonesome, unconsoled.             Be clad,

my armies of the dead, in tender

coats: each (of them), each word is naked,

a figment, no costume & no costume

jewelry or mute fabric, combustible;

these no pyre, sentences: no glib

innueundo, no story for the sky.

Polyurethane, too, my countenance:

I want you to pull & reattach 

my limbs in that same

way: you spider, chimera,

        cipher for the actual:

before you I'm also a dummy, no mouth,

                                           no brain.