A Cassette Tape Has Two Sides

1.
Stilted landscape: a pool of ink
ringed by walls of mulberry silk
and a burnished cliffside to repel
the blade-laden breeze. Pluck
hairs like guitar strings. Bleed in
staccato. Sing a song of vanishing
beneath a mask of greasepaint
and highlight the eyes in green.

2.
We press diamonds into coal,
vomit chlorine across sequinned windowpanes,
splatter ink on silk and sketch a portrait
made of grass stains:
a symphony of red and orange,
wildfire hurtling through stiletto forests,
translating leaves of lace to the language of ash.
We become the breeze and our tongues are the blades