Adelaide

I don’t quite comprehend this landscape

the perfect line of houses by a blue river,

and the superimposed smoke cloud

from the bushfire in the distance,

this place so mundanely familiar

yet quietly discrepant from

what I recognize as Americana

life and language,

just as I can’t understand the syllables

of this black hair blue eyed romance beneath

the taxidermy peacock,

found within a bookshelf filled with lyrics

I wish I could read, love, and own,

for my love words exit the throat

and are shaped by my tongue,

a sort of tasting before spitting out

meaning broken down by enzymes

or sentimentality—

but for him it’s all in the lips

as though he only cares to eject

sounds and the emotions an afterthought;

the implications, secondary.