KUKLOPS
Brian Kubarycz
I am tall-lungs, long-tongue Cain. Weather-
maker they call me. Try to gather your hair
near my chimney, rain clouds will come in-
to position, lightning strike your dog. Island
am I, sarcophagus of sea lions, drowned in just
an inch of cold-seal brine. Whales break, the kraken
seethes upon my wrinkled beach. Becalmed,
seamen repent their inchiostros, revert to your religion,
affect a longer, hempen leash. Come over though,
and overwhelm me. Bring milk, grape and tobacco leaf.
Green too frightening to think of, love’s tender sheep
graze safe over the groin. Love’s too-strong seams
and stays perturb my dreams, throng them with trade-ins,
imps, voles, ossicles and naked leather mouse.
Surrender as the curlews do. Of waders sandmen
tell tall-lungéd tales. Intruder, become won.
Hoarse is my song. But my pies are baked ochre
for you, whose lips and eyes go white, become
as ice. Am I the only one-eyed suitor to woo you?
Have others winked while I was fully blind?
This forehead was once golden-edged. Lit
lantern was my brow. I do not know how it
began to dim. Superintending the edge of this
world, waiting for veined temples to descend, I plunge
into the wreckage and I search for my lost kind. Alone
but for compass, pen and skin, I have sphinxed the riddle
of their fashioning, the year of their extinction. Mateless
was I born. I was born a skiff launched from my mother’s side.
Stay with me, my hearth, my battered bride.