Night Time

Frank Stanford

When I stand in the moonlight of the clitoris
I am like a canticle
The light years of the hermit's
ear in a conch

Sung To The Hills is what the stone says
And the breakwater goes on
making its bruises

The sleep in your eye like a bee on a rose

The things which can pass through
your mind when the fish don't bite
splinters clouds pianos
five dried up minnows like a coon's paw

There is an old seafarer
who lives in a barn over the water
two coves down

He has a photograph in a jar of oil
that shows him with a woman in his lap
She is holding a guitar
It is made from some kind of driftwood
And a breathing squid

When he gets drunk
I feather the oars

I can hear the dew
crawl down my neck like a watchchain

You can breathe
on the moon
It is a piece of butcher's ice

Because it is dark
the front end of my boat is full of leaves
I've stared at a wildcat
until it wept I really have
not knowing it was blind

Where I am you have
the school mistress to the east
and the Drive Inn to the west
They are all about
sixteen miles from here

I can feel the stars with my eyes shut
They are like crumbs
of cornbread
always in my pockets

To get warm I put my back into it
to work up a good sweat

Once I caught a smailmouth
trolling with an African Violet

When I was twelve I had to
wash my mouth out with soap
for taking the deaf girl to the woods
and holding a lantern
under her dress

The huckleberries were in bloom

Since I could talk like an Indian
I was her only companion

The shadows of her palms were like birds
that weren't really fighting
When she kick a sack of flour
it tucked its tail and left
Her feet would be white

We built a grotto out of willows and mussels
We found an old victrola
The only thing I could hear was the wasps
When the seafarer sang
if you could call it that
we both looked up

The whippoorwills were quiet

Anybody that would try to strum
some tentacles
must be something wrong with them

Have a daughter

At a certain hour each evening
Take a jigger of air and raise both fists
to the bloodshot moon

Ginny Stanford