Photo by Madi Doell on UnsplashInsomnia
Alejandra
asks why I will never let her sleep
in my bed. How to explain the narrow channels
behind my eyelids, wiring them open when
they peak in heaviness? Those dark highways
are overrun with sleepless parasites.
I want to keep her innocent, untouched
by the teeth that can burst from my retinae at night.
The inky haze
of post-orgasmal bliss, the fierce pressure
of legs suctioned together. Her skin is still
burning sensitive. I touch her at
the waist to tease round three. I relish my power
to draw her strangled voice out low and deep.
She tastes sweeter when I make her wait.
I could feed on her pleasure, never mind my own.
I use my thigh
between hers like the member I do not
possess. I am a cartographer,
probing this terrain despite having mapped
it a hundred times. Dried-up lake of dark
birthmark on sand of brown skin. Two mountain
peaks, a valley between that makes her shiver
when my mouth forges new routes through its landscape.
My weight on hers
grants me the authority I want, like a man
in uniform. My comforter is stained,
so she slips beneath the cool white of my topsheet.
Her eyes threaten to close. I want her to run.
I lift her. I won’t help her dress. I drive her home,
return to mine, to clean the evidence
of loving, settle for a sleepless night.
Vermont Sonnet
Quechee is ugly-beautiful this time
of year. Midsummer threatens – those hot jaws
of river gape and merge, catch runoff from
the factories. The elderberries rot
among the Queen Anne’s Lace and cast-off dirt.
The boys climb shelves of granite, throw themselves
off covered bridges where the railings turn
to mush, eaten away by termites. Watch
the confluence – needy waters swallow
our doomed landscape. I picture my thirst
turned animate – would it not rage like this,
if I asked it to live this way, too? How
my body has become a needy gorge.
I have wasted the summer, rotting too.
