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Gillian Cummings Spirits of the Humid Cloud It’s hot in the land
of the mighty, spearmints scent the
summer, pierce the air, the air
thronged with ghost-girls, cloud-covered, milky
in the dawn, soft as pussywillow
nubs rubbed by rough thumbs, the girls are filmy as
tulle, their dresses crinkle from the
weight pressed moist against them, fingers
pass through their tresses too fine to know
knots, hair which would be wild on the wind like
kites if something stirred, but the girls are
caught in cobweb cages, can’t move, can’t cry,
their voices muffle like mushrooms, their
voices bubble up only if it rains, a
cool rain, a rational, and we know nothing if
we don’t know these girls are grey-souled, they’re crazy, jazzed like
mockingbirds, shrieking at touch, the feel of our bodies
passing through their self-shifts pains
them, pains their boundarilessness, their bottomless
death-in-death wish, their need to be otherworldlier than God hast made. Gillian Cummings |
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