Jules Gibbs How was it the I located another I, then stood sinking in the wet sand like a trembling bisection to help me say: am leaving you, which the mouth of the ocean, that many-tongued colossus translated: I believe in you. The ocean’s tongues never say love; they say pull or rush or plunge — spit out snarls of dark ganglia. What was it we thought we sealed in the philtrum — deep, erogenous, Greek for kiss — or pressed spleen...

Jules Gibbs The street below is a stage of awninged shops you are seven small volcanoes maze of wrought iron, recess, treachery of fire escapes an earthquake to excite still water — give it to me— your ineffable song put it in my mouth; ignite the fuse sirens wail in lamentation over gray rooftops of no protection, no protection in false rooms where we exchange reckless gifts everything awaits release, departure, disarray, ruse not...

Jules Gibbs My mothers were famous unknowns who lived in cellars where walls wept ceaselessly in the language of water. Blue ironing board, dangling cord, clench of clothes pins with nothing to hold. A reservoir, my maternal line pools in a porous foundation — wells up, amniotic. The only way through is a sacral path of cracked slabs, what I will make from the exertion of hands on a wrung rag, hung like a spent thought in the...