XVII. L’Étoile

With hands tracing the half-moons of engraved snakes and horseshoes,

Having nothing of the serpent about her except a blue and noble plain, an affogato,
And napkin square afresh with each journey, on the walnut burl veneer.
Reverse side of which might as well be kelp separating the antipodes—
Or else, to trace the sentiments fanned out like currency, of our converging knees
Around the corner—The nitrary’s still pot—vitriol-scoured—the varec, its violet iodine

Clouds condense into crystals colored anthracite. All for counterfeit-marking iodine
Pens—The vapor is the same as that which confronts our space—Minus the model horseshoes
Drawn into café tables. Before kelp ashes exhaled hopefulness, or iodine; before bended knees,
The sea beneath its sunlight filters of rockweed—Blade surfaces dark with crème drifts, an affogato
In lieu of all crescent figured hippocrenes missing there, for a lack of land-based antipodes.
To thwart the wiles of space, ours is composed of these entities such as Mélusine, in wood veneer—

Where unversed moderns’ glasses and ash trays superimpose the table’s matched veneer.
Currents retroflect, and wrest us a moment before drowning. That metallic aftertaste, the iodine
Radiocontrast, or was it the price for that feigned look upon a serpent of brass? An antipodal,
Yet persistent touch disappears. Of those ensuing days spent foundering in our horseshoes—
Lush pastures yield cumbersome folios, in them we recognize ourselves—Cradling an affogato

For hours, think of iodine, the second heaviest essential element. I am standing up to my knees

In seawater with ironclad complicity, but the dilute relevance of some dreams fails knee-jerk
Reactions—The slow, inexorable pull of starfish on pearl oysters, presumed hidden in the veneer—

A black pearl is pitched so unflinchingly into vinegar, by one credulous of stars? Equivalent affogato,

Arrives at this interval; no more is required. I preferred instead to shift the questioning to iodine
Fumed for latent fingerprints, or concentrated in thyroid tissues, or painted on wounds. It is antipodal;
Therefore, meaningless in subject—Just the trailing hand grazes a spawning horseshoe crab

From a preceding scherzo—Longing to be spared flames and ashes of birthing stars; a horseshoe crab
Survived satyresses embedding  the shale. By their fading interludes, eyes multiplied in the knee bend
Of a tidal basin and its threatening glass. A horse shied from a ship unpacking from the antipodes

Knowing well its expenditure at certain latitudes, where slanted trunks make diamond matched veneers
For our own states of mind. Sea smoke ascends asymptotically after kelp beds give up their iodine
To shield the stronger sun in clouds. Evincing the strings we prepare to break, to meet over affogato—

This face has features very similar, and the same spoon bestirs unbroken smoothness in your affogato,
And in that silence held the ladder of stars by which we climb. That hazy speck of moon horseshoe crabs
Frame in compound eyes.—Perchance a rearing serpent imitates the swan’s neck, or volatilizes iodine’s
Violet vapors. Or, the cloven features are found duplicated in another line; bracing for sharp knees

From a remote past, and entrained by strong habits whose beginning and end, I abandon as veneer—
The lack of which was so obviously there. Turning finally to the crowd, the task is follow the antipodal

Line—Receiving affogato, one is seen for the first time, either by noon or midnight at the antipodes
This symptom of feet demarcating space, sanitizing it with iodine, to thrust one knee for a model pose—
Deprived of the cast-off horseshoe, without the least hint of veneer, we are salt in the twinning dusk.