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i:
Piano music drifts
through the window
and stops. Someone's
composing--a man
with luxuriant Persian hair,
eyes like unmatched stones
set as a close pair.
Leaning on my elbow,
like Rembrandt's Saskia
at her upper story window,
I'll whisper
to no one--not
even him--this reverie.
ii:
Don't--don't leave a mark
where none should be.
I don't want your kiss
under his scrutiny.
Yes, you can smooth my hair.
Besides, it's too late now.
Already your hand's
crossed over my brow,
already our eyes
dared once to meet,
and liquified
in pools of heat,
while frugal and pent,
we kept ourselves apart.
A kiss can be traced--
don't start.
iv:
It's like I'm nineteen--
or sixteen: falling in love,
or drowning in the riptide-pull
of hormones, I'm not sure which.
Like then, interminably confused.
But now I know to read Sappho
and know my passion's nothing
unprecedented, only--unbearable,
always, this longing.
Dumbfounded, ecstatic,
my heart beats breakneck
to hear its torment
so exquisitely laid out.
xi.
"Not 'would you like' but 'do you'--
I'm not offering, only curious."
I was rubbing the foot stretched out
before me, eyeing the toes.
First surprised, then relieved
or disappointed, or both--
still, you told me
all I asked to know.
To know and not do,
an indelible line we drew,
as if longing would lessen,
each word not a caress,
or sigh a stifled kiss.
xiii.
Then it was my turn.
I was brimming over--
but could not mouth the words
for what I would do.
I would rather show you:
take my hands in yours.
Place them on your chest;
my lips will wander between them,
my legs part.
The window wide open to the breeze.
A seabreeze.
Salt on your tongue.
Brine.
The taller the coconut tree,
the sweeter the milk.
I climb to the top
and sway there.
xiv.
Vehement, your voice ragged
and charged, charred by the flame
of unspent desire:
"You're not mine and I'm
not yours!" Had I presumed?
Or were you spooked by your own thoughts,
like a dog barking at his reflection?
I couldn't deny what you'd said,
but inside I did deny it,
I did, I did, I did, I do.
xv.
I'm being repossessed.
Can't you hear my love-screams
in your dreams?
My treasure chest,
I kept from you so tightly sealed,
now sprung, ransacked; my dowry,
clutches of daisies, wild iris,
fodder strewn
across this parceled field,
the quadrants of my marriage bed,
where he and I have stretched
and played and bled
for twenty years.
It's his to open,
my damask linens his
to finger, his to breezily unfold
and set with the polished silver,
so long unused.
My nails that dug in deep
to pull from the roots
our garden's rampant weeds,
dig into the earth of his back,
tilling new rows to plant next year,
but my timing's out of whack,
the upturned clods
will freeze and harden
in the frosts, the snows
I can feel coming,
even in the sultry air of August,
especially in August . . .
and I know I will be left
laid open, looted,
and unutterably bereft.
xvi.
Today I don't feel like I fell in love.
Today I feel it's
all a kind of fever,
a tantric spell, spontaneous combustion,
poetic frenzy, self-immolation,
a sacrifice to the gods
of all I hold dear. Today
I don't feel the ice floe
at the center of my life, I think
I made it up, the way I made up you.
Walking through my courtyard,
under the beneficent willow,
today I wonder: could I give any of this up?
And for what?
If only you would call.
xvii.
Not to call you--yes.
But to still the dialogue
in my head? To banish
the imagined because it brings
with it a frenzy? I might as well
coat my heart with oil
as try to stop these thoughts. . .
xxi.
"Stop blaming the poems!"
My muse's voice was stern,
and full of warning.
"It's not their fault
your heart's macheteed in two
and dug out like a cantaloupe,
like a Polynesian canoe.
They might appear to write themselves,
but never have they led you
where you were not already headed.
Their seeds are bedded
in fibre and pulp, mush
of that ripe melon.
Eat or let it rot!"
xxii.
And you, who've never seen a falling star,
what will you wish on, and what will you wish?
Here, where I am, the stars rub shoulders,
showering me with sparks.
What can I offer you?
I've offered everything to Aphrodite.
Still, there are things I'd like to show you,
things not yet in any poem.
Apache plumes and river clay.
Things in my heart.
The leash is broken.
I'm free, but not unencumbered.
My heart is laden with roses
and pricked by a thousand thorns.
There are so many things to wish for
and so many ways . . .
Let me pull at the roots
of your fine head of hair;
Let me dance a rumba
while you watch.
How simple, if it were just about bodies,
and not about love.
xxiii.
How I'm dying to show you these!
As if they might turn your head
my way again, revive your flagging
memory of me, for I'm sure I've been
forgotten, displaced by her I
had thought to . . . . Her long neck,
you told me . . . a Valkyrie,
while I . . . I, Hetaera-Horae,
plump my striped silk pillow,
shift back on my side, and write.
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