"Sometimes, After Making Love"
by Ellen Bass
Sometimes, after making love, when
we lie in the lavender silence
and feel the blood slip
through our arteries and veins,
sliding through the capillaries, thin as
root hairs, bringing bliss to the most
remote outposts of our bodies, delivering
oxygen and proteins, minerals, all the rich
chemicals our cells crave and devour
as we have devoured each other. I
lie there as sound reasserts itself,
and listen to the soft ticking on the clock
and a foghorn, faint from the lighthouse,
a car door slams across the street,
and I want to say something to you,
but it's like trying to tell a dream,
when the words come out flat as
handkerchiefs under the iron and the listener
smiles pleasantly like a person who doesn't
speak the language and nods at everything.
It should be enough that we have
lived these hours breathing
each other's breath, catching it like
wind in the sails of our bodies.
It should be enough. And yet
I carry the need for speech, strung
on the filaments of my DNA like black pearls,
from the earliest times when
our ancestors must have lain still,
like us, in amazement
and groped for the first words.
"Where I Go After Sex"
by John Grey
I won't tell you this is a memory.
You won't ever know I'm on a country
road after rain, water-logged birds
shaking their wings, globs of water
flopping from tree branches, scattered
puddles of half-formed reflection,
some I step over, others I splash my way
through. You'll think it's just our
bodies climbing down from all that
passion, the sweat of it now seeping
from our pores whiter than light.
You won't see the heavy petals
of the bluebells or the huddled cache
of monarchs slowly splitting into
single butterflies. You'll feel my thigh
like a ribbon draped down yours.
You'll roam my chest with gentler
fingers, as if the ribs are not May
hills, the nipples some place other than
fluttering on a thousand drying branches.
You'll whisper words of love like
they're coming from you while I'll
say mine to the wet grass I kneel into,
to the root of a wild flower I nudge
up from the muddy soil as if to hand
its beauty back to someone. The clouds
are breaking, It's for you. The sun is
shining and again I thank you for it.
"Afterwards"
by Dorianne Laux
When we sat side by side
on the edge of the unmade bed,
staring blindly at our knees, our feet,
our clothes stranded in the middle of the floor
like small, crumpled islands,
you put your arms around my shoulder
in that gesture usually reserved
for those of the same sex - equals,
friends, as if we’d
accomplished something together,
like climbing a hill or painting a house,
your hand at rest over the curved bone
oh my shoulder, my loud nipped
softening into sleep.
Stripped of our want, our wildness, we sat
naked and tired and companionable
in the sleek silence, innocent
of what we’d said, what we’d done,
our breath slowing, our heads tipped
and touching at the crown,
like a couple of kids
slumped on a dock in the sun, our legs
dangling about the bright water,
admiring each other’s reflections.
"Sun and Moon"
by Gina Zeitlin
It's all about sex,
we both know that.
But what I wonder is
why
after each molecule of desire
in my body has been satisfied
after
the sudden moistening, the deep
fierce aching and rising heat,
after
the throbbing glory of release cries
of need and pleasure have dissolved
into the air,
Something like my soul slips from me
And goes to you,
without choice or question,
and wraps itself around you
all night, like the breath
of the moon
And why
I carry the thought of you
As constant as any sun
in my heart.
"Love & Desire"
by Elizabeth Claman
Falling up into the sky.
To swim fishlike and prone through the dazzle,
and me, the smallest speck, only a shimmer of reason
leaning in toward the point of consent.
But you, there: what a constellation!
The whole music welling up, prismatic and infinite.
If there were more than this, what language could
hold us?
or what fine cilia on the belly of desire?
The mouth itself might be a place of wisdom,
the tongue a monument to progress,
the lips, each one a citadel cast open like the first
day in May.
And the teeth? Once barriers to communication, they
now each sing
like the blue green waves, rising on their backs
and arched for pleasure
as the curl of foam takes them by surprise.
Joining in as many ways and grateful.
Even my hair this morning is glad.
And the sky, who sometimes has her reasons,
comes down gently all around us,
touching her blue hem to every particular
until the whole cake rises in the sun!
"Night Poem"
by Penny Harter
I lie on my back
savor aching hips
ribs that rocked their bone
against yours.
The small night wind
dries our cheeks,
plays with my wet hair.
My belly floats in it,
my soft breasts,
brown nipples dimpling,
and I am gone into mist
a handful of water our fingers spilled
rising.
"Time To Embrace"
by Michael Foster
The resolute moon is framed
just above the treetops
in the narrow parting of curtains.
My eyes, startled by the full light,
open abruptly to it and to the liquid
embodiment of time -- digital time --
hovering beneath the window:
2:39, in angular, red numbers.
The disorientation clears
and I am returned
to our analog time:
the big hand (mine)
on the bare swell of your hip
your small hand clutching
my shrunken, still damp
cock like a lifeline, clinging
to time that spends itself
whether we spend it or not.
While we were not looking
the dogwood faded
and is best forgotten
leaving the moment uncluttered:
the ascendant moon, lighting
your flesh as it blossoms
in its own season, comes
full like the moon
in the fullness of time.
"Finishing Touches"
by David Meuel
We lie sideways
under the sheltering
sheet. I
have wedged myself
against the back
of you, my arms
wrapped
around your sides,
my hands
around your breasts.
Your hands
cover mine.
We talk
in touches now.
We listen
to each other’s fingertips.
"Her eyes in sleep..."
by Anon Author
Her eyes in sleep
afterward
her body my love
sounds she utter then
without meaning
yet not meaningless
my heartbeat even now
echoing them.
"Listener"
by Joseph Millar
The woman with her face pressed
against my chest and both legs
locked around my knee, breathing deeply,
has floated into some quiet stream,
swaying past its wooded banks without me.
Somehow I've told her everything, whispered it
through my cracked voice
into the stillness around her
as we sat in the gloom
waiting for the movies to begin,
and later by the bridge,
watching the dim surf ignite offshore.
In this bed I've exploded each grief into her body,
one by one, until they came loose:
the drinking, the failed marriages and jobs,
the weight of my children pressing me down.
There must be some kindness I could bring
to her dream now, listening to her breath
unwind in the small room
and wishing I had never hurt anyone.
What still country have I come to,
where the long grass bends under the animals
when they lie down, emptied of suffering?
What slow river flows beneath her forehead,
the petals of her ears adrift in the auburn hair,
gathering darkness?
"Seamless Beauty"
by Wendy Lee
Bittersweet, this lying under you,
your nose buried in my neck,
"Can't get enough of your scent," you mumble,
and fall asleep.
I kiss the sweat-licked shiny top of your head
and twirl my finger slowly round and round
a lock of hair at the base of your neck.
Round and round, echoing the tug,
pull and swirling of our energies
which only moments ago, spun us out,
off this soft bed, careening to a place
where our joining felt infinite.
Someday I'd like to die this way
with you still inside me,
fall into a deep sleep and never wake up,
never have to know the parting,
the spent wave leaving the shore.
Your hair hugs my finger, and falls away.
Each twirl brings you closer yet farther from me.
The holding on becomes the letting go.
"Redbud"
by Wally Swist
Walking beneath
the flowering redbud,
whose purple blossoms,
you told me,
can be eaten
and taste sweet,
I am not sure
whether the fragrance I inhale
is that of your body
remaining with mine,
and reminding me
of this morning
after an evening
of love,
or the petals
of blossoms
blown from a branch
that becomes a streak
of freshness
on the wind,
not unlike
the way
you have marked me,
with such sweet surfeit,
that I am yours.
"The Ordinary Day Begins"
by June Sylvester Saraceno
by June Sylvester Saraceno
...at my desk
the screen blinks on
numbers begin their race
but inside me, the throb
of your last morning thrusts
continue, echo
you in me
the quiet seep of love spreads
I smile in secret
the computer hums
I, too, am humming, low
waves receding
washes of warm light
figures flit and flash
numbers, columns, rows,
I stare and suck my lower lip
that tastes of you,
your last kiss lingers
long after the ordinary day begins.
"In Victoria's Secret, Near the Bras"
by Neil Carpathios
The woman wants to know if I need help.
She's seen me fingering the lacy cups,
thinking of you
and those pendulous orbs
that swing above my naked nights,
that harden like stones
and fill my mouth
and box my ears
and glisten.
I should tell her when we're spooned together,
how they pancake, flat,
against my back,
when you brush your hair
I watch them in the mirror,
barely jiggle,
how to the sweat I sucked
from each sweet nipple
still on my tongue-
to all your body's miraculous ways
that gauge all need,
I return.
And that's why I browse
like a bra junkie
lingering what must seem
too long,
needing a fix.
"Maidenhair And Wild Roses"
by Wally Swist
I found the note
in the lunch
you had packed for me
that read, "I love you.
Remember this morning?"
And I did remember,
standing beneath the cliffs
partway up the mountain,
those massive mossy altars
lush with fern,
the emptiness at the center
of a frond of maidenhair,
silky with a spider's web,
and in full bloom
a pair of the reddest
wild roses, growing
from the same stem,
and, as if they could speak,
not unlike you and I
when we give voice
to passion, they spoke
in sweet declaratives,
trailing a fragrance
as rich as their color,
so thoroughly engaged
they were, as well as we,
in the language of the heart.
"A Moment"
by Abraham Linik
When we loved -
possessed by violent passion -
we knew.
We did not know.
Eternity
is this moment.
In the deep half-sleep
it seemed as if
the harsh, tense world
suddenly grew quiet.
Even the pillows
have sunk into sleep.
Far off, as if in a dream,
echoed the words of the poet -
What is it that matters?
What is it that lasts?
"Last Night"
by Sharon Olds
The next day, I am almost afraid.
Love? It was more like dragonflies
in the sun, 100 degrees at noon,
the ends of their abdomens stuck together, I
close my eyes when I remember. I hardly
knew myself, like something twisting and
twisting out of a chrysalis,
enormous, without language, all
head, all shut eyes, and the humming
like madness, the way they writhe away,
and do not leave, back, back,
away, back. Did I know you? No kiss,
no tenderness—more like killing, death-grip
holding to life, genitals
like violent hands clasped tight
in a great jaw and eaten, and the screaming
I grown to remember it, and when we started
to die, then I refuse to remember,
the way a drunkard forgets. After,
you held my hands extremely hard as my
body moved in shudders like the ferry when its
axle is loosed past engagement, you kept me
sealed exactly against you, our hairlines
wet as the arc of a gateway after
a cloudburst, you secured me in your arms till I slept—
that was love, and we woke in the morning
clasped, fragrant, buoyant, that was
the morning after love.
No comments:
Post a Comment