South African Tea

I'd love some comments on the imagery, in particular how much sense it makes! I'm concerned about the bit with Latin, and about the combination of tea and famous painters....

Any advice on trimming this down?
Any words or images that you know NOTHING about and make NO sense?

All comments welcome <3

"Rooibos Tea"

Breathe deep the chai haze—

Picasso's djinn,
a muse of eggshells and grandma's lace tablecloths,
cradles the tea kettle to her chest
and abandons Latin words and names—
flotsam and jetsam dribbling
irrelevant among the little red tea leaves;
the driftwood of genus and species bumping
against the shores of the South African scrublands.

She hovers orange and indigo,
a quavering flame of dreams
and drained tea dregs—
divination with a soft-spiced voice
at the bottom of the mug,
never quite gone—

a flock of Van Gogh crows
frozen in their hayfields.

Eclipse

I'm liking some of the shorter pieces I've done recently. Decided to keep the title the same as the topic; any suggestions for changing it would be great, though! :)

Any advice as to how I can tighten this up even more is appreciated. How do you like the imagery?
I know there isn't much space for real "flow," but does it work for you?

"Eclipse"

Breathless,
Grandmother Moon clasps
night to her bosom,
and curls, quiet and closed
before the sun;

a black-eyed Susan
blooming in a dying sky. 
 

Fairytales

I kind of had fun creating my own little folklore for this one :) I'm curious to hear what kind of story you come up with!

For critique:
Are there too many details in the "things not to do"?
How does it flow?
What does the ending (the part in brackets) mean to you?

"The Witch over the Mountains"

Listen:
in her youth, one day she
flew up over the mountains,
turned her hair black and
went to dance with the goblin king.

Hush, children -
she is the earth itself.
Only eat your chestnuts after roasting,
and do not walk barefoot in the grass;
she reaches for you.
Beware her grasping soil fingers.

Take no apples or sweets,
trust not to luck or coincidence,
always close the garden gate,
and pick the bugs from wildflowers
before taking them home -
or else the goblin king will take you
to dance with him, too.

[Over the schoolyard:
a vulture of perched storm clouds,
a sudden, brief god
of cat's cradle strings
and splayed fingers.
And moist earth, like parted lips,
electric and open to the rain,
casts her spell.

A flock of seraphs
hovers at cloud-edges to watch.] 

Salt of the Earth

Not...terribly proud of this one. I feel like it could use to be tightened up. I'm trying to move away from the first-person perspective that has sort of plagued my poetry for the last couple months. Not sure how well I pulled it off. Any and all comments to that effect are appreciated.

"Dry"

Bring the heat -
a second skin to shroud the horizon in dust.

A call and response:
sing, cicadas,
trill your stick legs and bead eyes.

Not daring to look back
and not knowing why,
you listen to the rattlesnake buzz -
it speaks in its low hum and hiss,
a song of grasses and endless sky.

Draw the salt up through the dirt -
crystals sprout from hair folicles,
paralyze eyes open wide.
Schrodinger's ghost haunts
the in-between places,
the gap where salt gathers in veins
and in the marrow of bones.

Stretch: a crystal demon,
a pillar of salt
spreading petals skyward.