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Date Posted: July 21, 05:17:pm GMT-5
Author: Xanthe
Subject:

5 Sensations

5 Sensations

(orange: fed in spoons)
Shiver starts in my uvula and follows down to my kneecaps, the back of my arms and sides of my legs. Citrus for licking and teeth chattering: once it was noisy summer, once cafeteria crates. Chew.

(marshmallow: poked in gently)
A phlegm that's come up and must be re-swallowed. A food detained for a few days between two teeth, just a moment ago freed. The last blob in the package, dissolving on the tongue to a million liquid chemicals. A swallow has never been so synthetic.

(peanut butter: worked off a plastic knife)
A similar feeling: somehow when speaking about love my mouth becomes leathery. Tongue gum and teeth engage in a thicker type of saliva. Peanut-buttery conversation, all of me lives in my mouth. Years of this taste followed by jelly, followed by bread. My tastebuds relive a thousand lunches.

(shortbread cookie: broken and munched)
Destroying only sandcastles, a beach slides down my throat. Bread is not the body of Christ. You are not a wafer, becoming nothing upon consumption. You must be crunched like hard walls of a village, you must be destroyed like the pantheist temples in an abandoned holy precinct. I lay my teeth, my whole army, into your destruction.

(chocolate: properly done)
Richest baby, we elope to a bed. Only pleasure; only a love of light and a leisure at dark. You grow and raw glee sprawls like groping tentacles, overpowering sense compacted tight in a ball toying by a yearning throat and beckoning stomach. With small sucks we light each one on fire. -------

---------------------------------------------------------

Coming Home

I'll give you the unabridged version
the absolutely everything
you wanted to hear
or didn't
I'll tell you all that happened

the look (capital T H E)
all the days of friendship
the first kiss and its aftermath
the spaghetti we ate with cider beforehand
the sunflower upholstery his mom picked out for the couch in case you wanted to know

I'll listen to your story
your everything version
with words including flattered groped loosened and lengthened
jealous making words
and shameless tales

your long crush
the days of unknowing and sunbathing on prickly lawns
Coppertone 15 and beads of sweat on your upper lip and underarms
(how you hoped he wouldn't smell your sweat on three different occasions)
the flirting and then the slow loving acquisition

How far
How good (Relative to ex-boyfriends we've shared
I need points of reference)
How long (That's a while)

I'll say I missed you (I do)
You'll cry when you give me a hug
Then you'll head for my refrigerator as usual
We'll eat low-fat potato chips and believe they taste real
believe our stories taste real

---------------------------------------------------------

7/28/00

The nights are short, but every day they lengthen,
The shadows darken longer, quicker on the wall.
You sniff the air; it smells of dust and ash
And loose strands of spider web stirred up.
The summer's falling over now, almost
On the ground. You feel a gravity
You never felt before. It pulls you toward
The cobblestones. The nights are warm, and still
A tender soft and tired breeze rubs your cheek.
And this night is so dry a place, so heavy.

------------------------------------------------------

Interesting Situations in Which I Have Imagined You

The Kitchen

The blue and white tiles, made uncold,
curve up to you and her
so you smooth them down again, for linoleum is dough
while you two, reckless, roll
and shape. The light, like flour, is shy
and sprinkles sifts
and cradles soft, oh softly

(Is this all fair? Maybe it was different altogetherhard floor, hard light, a shattering of the air.)

A Car

There is no movement, not even
the sound of far becoming near
outside on asphalt. Actually, everything
is still, even sweat
remains unshaken. She is alert,
waits like the road,
like she will be split.
Only your hands keep her from you
now and again,
your large fingers
and the calluses that leap
from them, undermining grace.

The Grass

spots of stars and
streaks of green and
shots of dew
pockets of dirt that crackle
pebbles that grab and choke
a tree that shadows overhead till the blast from you and fire
the hot eruption
then crisp bark uncoiling
and pine needles unthreading everywhere
and yes
you and she,
you

(but, love, where am I? I'm helpless now, wordless, so hurry, hurry, awaken
a wheat field, unleash a musky office, a dark wooden desktop.)

----------------------------------------------------

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Replies:

Cafe Attractions -- Xanthe, July 21, 05:32:pm GMT-5