Crispin Rodrigues, Singapore
The sleep of reason produces monsters
After Goya
How the owls have gathered as groomsmen
hooting at the arrival of their dark brides,
who in their love propagate a race of night terrors.
What they do I could never. My reason is to wake
with her beside me, and observe between wife
and widow the shortening of breaths with each day.
In her hair, grey starlings nestle. In my fingertips
the strain of lilies has cannibalised itself,
leaving its bloodied stump. We are rolling in a bed
of shadows. This time we will make it work.
This time a forest will grow with children’s dreams.
Outside, the bats and the cats and the owls watch.
There is room
“In Lower Pomerania is the Diamond Mountain, which is two miles and a half high, two miles and a half in depth; every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the whole mountain is worn away by this, then the first second of eternity will be over.”
—“The Shepherd Boy”, The Brothers Grimm
Years ago, I brought a wounded bird in
from the cold, fixed its wing and gave it food,
but it chose to starve to death.
Years later, I would find another on my doorstep,
this one with a broken heart, looking to be cured.
I welcomed his sad eyes and his tired chirps.
We’d try again.
You mottled bird of grey plumage, like a nest,
room for one, I have lived in your loose leaves
like a refugee, though I own the whole tree.
I do not confuse age with wounds.
When you take off your clothes to let me see
your cankers and sores, I find your teardrop penis cute,
drooping like a sprout from the folds of mottled earth.
My caverns are large and perpetual.
They hold oceans plenty with water,
and the sunlight filters.
There is room for families of birds and trees.
Crispin Rodrigues is the author of two poetry collections: Pantomime (Math Paper Press, 2018) and The Nomad Principle (Math Paper Press, 2019). His poetry and short fiction have also been published in several poetry anthologies and online journals. He works as a teacher.