Thicket

Dickicht - Thicket 20 x 20 cm gouache/ink/spray paint on paper

BINIARAIX

It is beautiful here in this

unpronounceable place. Have you 

ever wanted to make love to a landscape?

Smoke rising from the orchards  

as shapely and transparent as a negligee

made of sheerest muslin, untouchable,

covering it all but just barely. I want to get hold

of the sunlight that drips off the palm trees here  

and smear it all over your body. How would

you respond? Have me arrested?

Involve me in a fight with your boyfriend? I’ll tell

you my name first, then give you some biographical details….

(Later, in the village tavern) hey, hombre,

I ask the guy sitting next to me at the bar

how do you get that smell around here that is 

so evocative of lemon peel all wrapped up in itself, cloves, cinna-

mon, olive oil, a dab of honey rubbed deeply  

into the succulent flesh of an organic

free-range chicken stuffed with garlic toes

roasting in its own juices?

Usually it comes evenings when the mountain’s

dissolved in shadows, and the crickets swell and roar

and the dogs are barking at other dogs barking

and the cock lies down with the hen.

Can I live here forever, I beg, totally losing it,

can I die here on this beer-stained, saw-dusty spot?

Fortunately he doesn’t understand a word I’m saying.