Sonnenizio on a Line by Carl Phillips

Sonnenizio

Now he's singing, cadence on a rough sea:
no quiver in the sky, only a rip, as when a violin plays

and it slices the air around your ears now
and now; how delicate his fingers touch

this instrument, these strings that twangs
when he plucks them, one-by-one-by-one.

Now he's stopping, stillness in a rough wind:
it must be hard to imagine

a stillness having fallen in this weather,
like that of a peach's soft flesh, but imagine: this

was what he felt. I cannot, beside him in a lime
light, with legs like a leave / like two Babel's towers,

see another reason he'd stop: to him a peach stillness
to be tasted this long, and this long: momentarily teeth-in-peach.


¤