Selena Sestina

Her version leapt upon the region singing
while the students in the planetarium wept.
There is no legion crawling here at the last
to rescue my misgivings from my fate.
Her elbows grazed the fortunate heart
and solved the noose around my fantasy.

No one's window reaches first to last
or conjures long rows of sanctioned fantasy.
If all the average ruins in the city wept
they would twist the noose around my heart.
Regard this tangent whirling toward your fate
which I unleash with quiet singing.

Her wrist caught the light that her skin wept
upon the fleece of graduated fate.
Did the flaring diadem dim panicked fantasy
or does the stream of pleading last
beyond the grip of minor fishes singing
along the edge of her porous heart?

The loss of affable reason took to heart
the grievance of the random singing,
but she could not help but cough at fate
for blaring out the most envious fantasy
as morning planted streams that wept
to catch the sunlight free at last.

There is no cure for the grip of fantasy
that grabs and tears at my vagrant heart
with grinning fatal noose of singing
of her eyes closing upon the tone that wept
as I pound red-headed leather on the last
and throw myself back on the future of our fate.

What song has tied the noose around my fate
and kept this famished memory for last?
Not even mine, but stretched across the heart
of generations, foreign stanzas singing
beyond the reach of fables or learned fantasy.
Did you hear the antic pilot deny he wept?

Her version's shaking changing phases fate
as it phases me, lost in the breath after breath of singing,
not yet choked by the noose that time has wept.