Alisha counts from one to ten
and down from ten to one again.
She can do it in her head
or with her fingertips instead.
It’s a trick she learnt to play
loosing marbles yesterday.

In a gradation
of hours, time slips
back on a flight path home,
not in fits and starts
but as a continuous loss or gain,
depending where home is, which way

You are the edge over which
I fall, a dark attraction.
Wings against my palms
flutter blood, claws find flesh
to hook, your inside-outside face
nuzzles me; lips hunt the nipple.

Daddy taught me how to kill
the unnecessary chick:
four fingers about its neck
then pressure with my thumb,
but in my schoolboy days
I preferred a Gatling gun.

This is to kiss her lips:
a snapshot photo at the arc
of a swing when we were laughing
and hanging back on the ropes
caught at the zenith before
the downward plunge, before