The biographer always works late

By Alan Kissane

To coil

a compliment about your neck

I’d have to get closer

than the wine on your tongue,

the whites of your twig

-like fingers. Don’t

just reject my words

because they don’t fit

into your throat. Love

can be a lozenge. Let it

soothe you, sweet music

that rattles the dust off

the shelves and the doors,

an earthquake without cinders

or destruction. I devolve

to your government.

Open the door to

the index of you

I’ve made. Take your time

to look around.

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Alan Kissane works as a teacher of English in the Midlands, UK. His poetry has appeared in print and online at Allegro, Culture Matters, Dissonance Magazine, Dreich, Dust Poetry, Emerge Literary Journal, Epoch, Fahmidan, iamb, Kindling, and Neologism, amongst others. He is currently editing his first chapbook entitled ‘She Took The Children Now We Wait’.