by Nikki Magennis
(07/25/07)
This one Tuesday night, I lay down my book,
no words, baby, there are
no words I look at you and hmmm,
sap rises
's this aching pulling kind of feel creeping up my legs between my
eyes and mouth somewhere I can taste you
holding on
spreading wide
bone pressing against hip-
bone, pressing my heart flat
against yours like a coin presses into your palm
warm, with the weight held tight.
Hands tease questions in places.
slip of a finger
tip
dancing
back looping the loop, hooking the moment, working up
a call-and-response method that burns
faster each time, catching light like the stars coming out over the
vast, rapidly
darkening sky
and your arms keep winding round me through me
interlacing and weaving, forming
surprise jolts that appear as
sudden exquisite
bruises of pleasure in the rising soft blackness that contains a thread
of rhythm a dark pulse.
The blackness increases we knock
against each other
slam
Christ Jesus backwards
into heaven -
star shattering supernova scatter in fragments like space rockets
make no screaming descent towards earth
wings pointing tight back along the body streamlined into a smile
And after
electric light pools around us while we smoke
untouching
naked as wood,
hot as embers, having shaken the air.
The Poet's Companion - by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux