Plum black & the blush white of an apple
shoulder, melon & cream, in tones to list
the flesh; in light, washed colors off at last
& textures sheer with damp I slowly pull
from you with your quick help. Weekend's ample
procrastinations to forget the least
of what we want to do. April, half a blast
of cold, half new light, green & simple.
He —
You saw the way her body looked at me
all address
calling me down
she was so
well-turned,
curve and volume
her body presented itself —
Clay —
I could mold it
She —
I try to think of the cup of a hand,
of legs in a tangle, and not the thistle
though even it, purpled, spiking away,
wants to be admired, wants to say, whistle
a little for me. O every little thing wants
to be loved, wants to be marked by the cry
All that has tamed me I have learned to love
and lost that wildness that was once beloved.
All that was loved I’ ve learned to tame
and lost the beloved that once was wild.
All that is wild is tamed by love —
and the beloved (wildness) that once was loved.
I.
There's nothing more
erotic than
onered
Chilean plum
slumbered in
the brown palm
of the curved
hand of the right
man.
It needn’ t be tinder, this juncture of the year,
a cigarette second guessed from car to brush.
The woods’ parchment is given
to cracking asunder the first puff of wind.
Yesterday a big sycamore came across First
and Hawthorne and is there yet.
Things happen when you drink too much mescal.
One night, with not enough food in my belly,
he kept on buying. I’ m a girl who’ ll fall
damn near in love with gratitude and, well, he
was hot and generous and so the least
that I could do was let him kiss me, hard
and soft and any way you want it, beast
and beauty, lime and salt — sweet Bacchus’ pards —
and when his friend showed up I felt so warm
and generous I let him kiss me too.
His buddy asked me if it was the worm
When you show yourself to the woman
you love, you don’ t know your fear
is not fear, itself. You have never been good,
but now you are so good,
who are you? Is it the liquidity of her skin
that bathes the world for you,
or her face, captured like a she-lion
in your own flesh?
This summerbed is soft with ring upon ring
upon ring of wedding, the kind
that doesn’ t clink upon contact, the kind
with no contract,
the kind in which the gold is only (only!) light.
Cloud covers and lifts,
She visits still too much, dressed in aromas
of fir needles, mango, mold: I still get lost
knowing she’ s close, me not getting younger
or more conscious. Sometimes I fantasticate
I’ m broad awake: her witchy presence waits
for me to jump into her arms, but then she’ s just
an incoherent ache in sleep’ s freaked scenes.
I feel her frosty nitrogenous hands and wrists
vaporing nooses around my head and feet
and genitals, conjuring my drab hair
into a party bowl of oiled, desirable locks.
