ANNE MARIE ROONEY
THE NO REWARD SESTINAS
1.
Will I use black for your fat boot. The eye uses too.
Come to and I singe eyes in black, the boot of your
mouth—you’re mine, too. No boot, but I bruise black, my eye
the eye of your scant black word, too. But I’ve known boots
and, booted with eyes pinched, I’ve been your bitch, too. This black
sheens black as boots. You, too, are eyed. If you’re the I,
I black your boot—eyes, too.
2.
I do it, that come-to. My me was once far more.
The more I do, our Once (damn that) combs me back to
you. To take more from me, you do it, that trick: once,
and once, and me in that grey moor. The dew of me
slicks me. So once I’ll do it to you—more than that
and that fat me-throe (more!)—back. Once, us two were that.
Do that to me once more.
3.
If you can stay, be dumb. I like how the night air
is air still. You are the note. Stay cold like a dumb
song, dumb as air, so like how you have stayed when the
sun’s—the crown’s—dumbed down. Stay and air what you like:
how like night. The moon (you think dumb) is air’s last stay.
It stays in like with air. So the day dumbs, and you,
you stay dumb like the air.
4.
I know the way out. My dark room has held more. You’ll see—
you are no ship’s hold. A way to room with my
face, my hide: you fold rooms back. No damn way this holds.
I hold this, my one way in. You can know the room,
but rooms move. Hold this—no, hold my mouth. You have ways,
the way the room that you once held is my last-known.
No way my room holds you.
5.
For one, my time’s not yours. My hand (thumb) did it best—
the best by one. And did, this time, the hand of yours
do your sick best? My hand—my one—is time done. Did
I? Did (not) your own time do best? The one close hand
my hand held—did that one? So you’re the best, so time
and time and hands sing best. But did you? You’re the one.
One time your hand did best.
6.
When the—my—heart comes a part, would you egg me. Yes.
Say yes to the fat egg. Each heart can, would, spare a
trick, a flat. Yes to Would you, the soft heart, bloom egg
to egg? When a—my—heart says yes (soft) the wet wood
bloats. Would an egg know the break? A round yes in heart,
and hearts that would say yes. If eggs are a part hearts,
the heart’s a wood egg. Yes.