Rapt
When
a man takes a woman from behind, she cannot see him,
even
though, in this instance, she is prey. Her field of vision
is
designed to capture sudden movement, not the lumbering
of
his body at her back. She tracks the objects closest to her face:
the
burlap grasses, the splayed legs of the railroad trestle.
If
she looks at them with one eye and then the other, they shudder.
Hell
We
call the division between the two parts
desire.
They are near enough to spark.
Above
the line, the woman is knocked out
like
daylight beneath a door. Below it,
the
men are agitated, aroused, estranged.
The
dusk-loose gnats blood-speckle and splash.
Colorization
Black
and white distances the viewer.
A
broken crow drops from the jaw of some animal into the snow.
If
we were to encounter it, with our chins tucked to our chests to block
the blizzard,
we
might think of it as shadow, but, in truth, the body is red.
There
are two ways to define this: restoration and desecration.
It
comes down to a question of actuality and intent.
When
you enter my room, it is dark. What you can see
are
broad patterns, the bars the blinds discard onto the linen.
If
this were in color, would you know whether or not to be afraid?
Deception
There's
no use in saying what if
it
were warmer
and
her skin doused with the sweat
of
orchids:
the
hammered back of an Ophrys,
Oncidium
cocked
by the wind,
threatening.
Should
it have happened then
(her
body
written
over in blossom),
the
ripened bees
would
have been faced with pollen —
honeyed,
unhinged.
Finishing Moves
We
begin by leaning, learning the feel of the other body
before
extending it into its longest possible line
but
finishing is different from this partnering:
it
is more like a property let go, where a female crawls
to
birth a litter, the ground teeming with weeds, choked.
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