Dogme Sonnet
The first from the sea to the gates
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So the overhead watercolors twist and gurgle
down into our cockades, Morana’s muted shawl
loose, unpinned as a scythe curved, infantile
potmetal and pitted yew against limbs crawling
across pepperbox crosshairs, satchel hide combed till
the bare sheepskin beneath broke, bled straw
dust. Over the cannonades and the storks’duckbills
we had started from the ships, cargo-maws
gaping skywards, detonated. He must, with brittle
canines and a thigh warm from a dawn
concubine’s stockings had time to call and quibble
with a footmaid, for his silk yards
laid like snares across crumbling, bonfired cobblestones.
Elsewhere, a loom weaver’s fingers tremor lard.
page revision: 3, last edited: 06 Aug 2026 05:18