By Simone
Muench
(thanks to Kim
Addonizio’s poem “For Desire”)
Sing me a least harmonic song, a song that is
fierce
to the ear:
and read to me in French, Creole style,
hurricane at the back of your throat,
slurring vowels Paris slick and soyeux,
or smooth as water in a well, no impulse
to lean into your own reflection.
Hand over your self so that I might hand it back
to you,
in the kitchen’s cobalt darkness where touch is
located in smell:
Finger to lips, Manzanilla olives; knee to knee
is salt and cough
of pepper; hand to hip is amaryllis blooming in
the window
like a fire show; odor of La Vita Dolcetto and
snow,
its milk glass glazing trees, glinting in the
margin
between stoplights and stars. Beyond mysticism
and ghosts and vapor, I want what I can grasp
onto. Dig into.
Loam, a layer of clay beneath skin. Mud
stiffening our hair until we are statues of
dirt; small
cuts on our bodies so that we may wash
and heal.
So we might seal the foul and the fair together
when we ransack one another in a field of
lobelia, milk vetch
while turkey vultures inch closer, sniffing us
out,
smelling blood on us, and cum on us, and breath
on us
so they fly back to the fringe of the field. And
wait.
As we bite and bleed, taut in cobalt dark,
beneath a rain that falls like pollen and rusted
chains.
*First published in GSU Review