Livio Farallo

a space for moontime

that lantern in the doorway
is a crack in the shadows
i smell.
from a small aperture
comes a massive freeway
budding like a section
of fog
spit up from the coast.
hammers can only ring
when the spirit
feeds them; when
stomach rumblings
dart across power lines
like rain. wait for a
voice to
starve itself and never
come home.
wait for a blood orange.
wait for a rope of fear
that was only skin
dripping from a tower.
seatbelts bar the night
from a sun anyone could
have uttered.
the sounds of airplanes
fade like sprinkled
sugar and
the sky is splay-toed
with kicking sand. a
snarling camel begs a
hand to lead it and
fire engines sweep the
street of drum majors
and parades
where women hugged
parking meters for
all the money that
let them stay put.
coal mines deepen
and tell us they will stink
of gas and money forever.

 

weather days

i can smell the rain
even though
my face is ripped away.
i can smell the rain
like gray paint
slowly dropped
on the fence.
and butter spilled, loose
and
rancid, smells as far away as
bone without gravity trying to walk.

i stumbled once when long
oars couldn’t
budge a
boat in ice; when a
sandstorm
couldn’t blind a
mouse,
when
stealing
a pack of cigarettes
wouldn’t bring me fire.
and the old man in candy clothes
fingering the harpsichord
like a pro
still couldn’t
sing.

it didn’t matter for
the breadth
of the evening that lingering
was the smell
of honey: one small comb
thrown under a hurricane
and forced to decompose, as a pond
does, after watering an army of sheep.
still,
my eyes dangling
like
leprechauns at the first
step
of a rainbow are
pulled back; are
a monogamous couple
refusing divorce.
and in place of a squeal that would have crumbled like a glacier,
a tongue tastes the salt of a spoiled finger. and i
remember the
sun smelling like rain
when my face
evaporated cool as vengeance and
stole through
a broken window.

 

drought

so the envelope is an empty saucer crying for milk. mountains flatten
from fear. there is, in that distant understanding, a naked thought that
burrows under your skin. words will fill more than a letter. the letter seals
the envelope and avalanches are peeling sunburns that smooth a wrinkled
face. those cascades washing floors never stepped on, are more than
cataracts with no place to go. they are shining drops of water that never
cry. your skin is pickled in water, too carelessly scrubbed through. your skin is
the letters of the alphabet no one understands. flowing water will never stop
the mountain crest from tumbling like bad meat. the mountain peak is a
drunk boulder. the mountain top is weather dammed. your skin is diseased
fur. there are saucers that spill their contents like fools in confessionals.
there are wrinkles that are soaked smooth like sin. fear is a sunburn. a
waterfall is a million mosquitoes stampeding at 200 mile an hour; a
million fireflies on a sunny night; a million arrows at bannockburn. the
mountain is a landfill with many digesting stomachs oozing methane.
the landfill is a cow with no milk for the saucer.

 

Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream. His work has appeared in The Cardiff Review, The Cordite Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Blotter, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere.