by Vernon Frazer and Michelle Greenblatt

Trees twist in the soft-baked wind that winds around the garden.

         How cold it is

                                        out here, the searing chill

                                        burning my face cold.

Even the warm whispers of breeze harden to spirals listing

             mute among the palms

which sway back and forth in the warm wind.

                                 The heat is its own contradiction.

A sweltering iceberg, secret as its melting surface,

closes

                                                                    in

from the bay,                        a blatant progression

of music

              seeping

                            through

                                         the cracks

                                                          of time.

Backwards is the way to homeland shelter

beneath the star-lit palms of your progression

from silhouette to heartland sun, a slow balm

calming the sweltering regression handed

to us by our mothers and our mothers before them.

Hand to hand touching has always been the same as face

                    to

                 fist

        for me,

                            the gift

                            of repression

as seen through the steam swelling a blackened eye

                              or others that have been given to me in surround

                                         -sound while I wept

          flames of declarative sentences

                   fastened around the audio's sweet chill