Amber Nelson


The Emergence Of Armor

Bone does not become thinner
at the invasion of an opening

it is only the cutting

waxen under skinned knees
the drift and rust of a wet blade

we have become less than
the sediment in our blood

the diseased movement of the body
our lips crust over

seal our mouthed calling
broken by the scalpel

out tenderness emerges slowly


Lovers

They adopted names.

Cohorts in formica, tin and twang, compromising
at used and rigid overtures, the red the lidded
aplomb tinged like lipped margins, anchored and
thinned, parched above whispers, a ratcheted
bearing that sucks the ashen order of canopy,
left to lift and dive.

Sometimes a strange, sometimes an accordion
for a kiss, and sometimes the sky rounding out
the mouth.


Heartbreak

Dusty possession of skin

the people count plenty
the season hunger

when streams dry
the wildebeest thunders
grass turns the herd, loping
for wealth in pastoral

the year tumbled
illuminating in yellow
invisible morning into crater


Glass Blinds

making sense of absence
in stained paper windows

how exact, the folded obstruction

the sill that submits
to the pressure of waiting

roaring through glass

the clatter of blinds retrieve
the border, sullen, burnishes

into the silo of wanting


A Wavelength of Visible Light

Mining a glass evolution.

Alight and blue smudged,
the next thing always belongs.

To pull the trigger.

To break like quicksand.

This conchoidal architecture is the fissure
in which to reopen.

As though perception could be picked
from soot and coal.

Sand evolved
lucid, in the heat.