Three Poems

by Linda Kohler 

Cyan 
 
I call toss on bedding intimacy
with fire.
 
Meet me on the cool axis
 
where our seaweed bods
glint civil enough
to grant a little taking
of warmth in nights.
 
Let’s speak of azure
and deep indigo,
being wrapped in water or sky,
being buoyant.
 
Meet me in seafoam green
where kindles of emeralds
crest the sands of unions.
 
Meet me in throes of cyan,
in waves,
let the sun imprint itself
 
on our subtractions.
 
Let’s talk of immersion,
submersion.
 
Let’s ally lightness and depth
and tangle.

The Snail
after the artwork of the same name by Henri Matisse
 
Us in spiral
tearing strips off each other:
 
we’re one
in many pieces;
eyes locked, slinging palettes,
 
skimming razors.
 
When our spiraling ends
we cling to windows--
joined--
 
gluing each other
where we are torn.
 
We nibble each other’s shells
to be strong,
 
we behold, retreat, and
tender, we emerge
 
tearing again.

Chitons
 
What if I could babysit?
 
Clean your radulae, I’d say
after I’d fed them seaweed,
then I’d bed their rocks in
tight,
fuss over their girdles.
 
In the shallows
my toes are duly armoured:
mother-chiton-me treads
light.
 
I wonder if I could know each chiton
by shell, by name,
by the way they curl up
in their layers, cradle
their particular
furrows.
 
I could be classed chiton.
I could be mother of all chitons
by what’s rutted under
my feet.

Linda Kohler lives and writes in South Australia, on Kaurna land. She's worked mainly as an arts teacher and currently assists with her own children's flourish. Her poetry appears in Pink Cover Zine and elsewhere.