Clasps
I want you to read to me
Your choice:
A James perhaps
(Joyce our Ireland, or William — our religion)
Baldwin to keep us awake,
Even ee cummings (still under your bed?) will do
Your crackling ash wood chords
Ascend my under-covers hips,
Draw me in
Like a home built by hand on that hilltop,
the fire cleaning your brushed riverbed,
Cut lemon bursts from your palm
These pages curl in your fingers —
Make the words yours
Do an accent:
a lilt, a Doolittle,
Be Bond, or Prine, or Bogie,
A jester as only you can —
A King.
It must be ten years since gravel flew backward when I found someone else
I left without ceremony
A fool with an imagination
It only took five years and
I forgot
your phoenix hand in my two;
the recesses,
The thunder of your eyes —
like trigonometry
gone.
I can unhook the tricky clasps alone now
The upper back out of reach
You had to jimmy undone
With both hands
I have not worn it, I cannot
give it away.
Sundays I dance in my kitchen as vegetables roast
No hand at my back
Not even once a season do I wonder or wait
I am hollowed of you
Tonight, last night
You echo in me
In the same voice that said No.
