Nusch Eluard

Scared of both loss and affection

Dangerous

Your open eyes and honest confessions




My soul sighs against your teeth, your all-American smile.

My Last Lieutenant

Empty cage

from where you never—

came and cleaned me out

Dry riverbed bereft

Hot sand could turn your eyes to glass

No more

two mountain lakes

Like me

lovers of the sky

Life below

the Mason Dixon line,

a cat called Moonshine,

time

slowed down,

sultry

summer of weeping

willow trees,

bores and bees (Can you

see the difference? Twice

bitten now

shy)

Once,

back in the woods,

grandfather and granddaughter

drawing dreams,

rusting

metal tractor parts,

broken

twigs dipped in water,

then,

watch,

castles ponies princes dragons ladies

disappear

into the hot heavy air

I gave it up for a song

A gesture towards blood

He lied for me

I lay like a girl in a film

Calm in the morning light

Moon skin and night between my thighs

Then,

Slinking around four days in his sweater

Flying down hills over rivers

Rhythm and open eyes

My mind full of what I’d gained

He made me tea to make up

For not meeting my gaze

Sunday planes and silence

Later,

Egrets circled my head

Messengers over the marsh

I still remember the feel of the drums

Thoughts straight lines and flesh

Connected

A normal girl

Camille Claudel

Tornado eyes. I’d like to see the birds hanging motionless in the sky. Empty cage of a heart.

"You didn't have to attract desire. Either it was in the woman who aroused it or it didn't exist. Either it was there at first glance or else it had never been. It was instant knowledge of sexual relationship or it was nothing. That too I knew before I experienced it."

Marguerite Duras, The Lover

Remedios Varo

"She sat there ...

Slightly filthy with erotic mystery ...

I saw

The dreamer in her

Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it."

Ted Hughes