THE BODY’S INFATUATION
His cinched
eyelash
is my muse.
The spasm
of his hair
flutters
across the
small of my cheek.
He smells of sweat and urine.
I pull him
closer
and lick
the strenuous salt
away from
his forehead.
Oh, God, how I love this.
I elaborate
my small teeth
into the
lines of his hands
passionately
resting the world’s head
into my
lap.
I could never be a mother.
He draws
circles and squares
into the
thinning sunset
with the
oval tip
of his
tongue
It’s the same one that runs along my
thigh.
But the
lines grow deep
trailing
his chin into his mouth.
My body
pulses into his touch
as it has
done before.
Beauty never dies with him.
The grave
they dug
still holds
the body
I never let
go of.
He stands
there, in the dusts of rain.
The stench of his smell still luring
me.
THE READER
he writes
with circular strokes:
buttons
swell into poetic translations
delivering sermons across the line
of a maimed robe.
fragility is the difference
between digging the hole and filling it.
he paints
charcoal into the loops of my back:
illustrating
lavender ashes
across a
surging canvas.
we used wafers as sponges
(sheets
as curtains)
while we rubbed the brown from the skirts of our bellies.
when it was
over
he aspirated into lilies
coughing
the color of oil into his palates.
THE TRUE ENEMIES OF POETS
Sometimes,
I like to visualize the calligraphy
of my
written words, words
that have
tolerated my late nights and disloyal syntaxes.
These
words, these conniving fragmented words,
are the
same words that use me
consistently.
But I must
tell you that each time
I try to
saunter away from their manipulations
they cleave
to me as if I were the voice
who never
spoke them aloud or as if
I was the
one, clumsy, on a half torn
piece of
paper.
But in the
end, it’s always them standing there,
in the
doorway of greatness, half naked and inflamed
by the
stubbornness of my humility.
And me,
poor me with no words, always pleading for them
To drop me
a line or two.
But on good
days, I watch them induce
the burnish
on a coat of ink. At the end of the day
I always
make sure to wipe my page clean
and
carefully soak my punctuation.
And this,
oh, this violated, desecrated piece of paper
will chafe
the ink from my letters away
and get up
and walk smoothly
back to my
printer.
