Pockets of Desire, Surfacing
Stuck at the intersection, I glance to see the lovers in the car
next to me, one’s head beneath the other’s, bobbing as a buoy
does on rough ocean; his hair chestnut, rogue grays
of early 30s, his head an albatross diving toward rapid
water, then back up with the seamlessness of a dancer’s jeté.
The driver ’s Adam’s apple, sharp, bent at a guillotine angle,
Judith beheading Holofernes, Capocchio’s neck under Gianni’s teeth.
I see the inhale of his throat’s hard swallow.
Who have they been to be this now: unable to wait for home,
rushing worship at the red light.
At the hotel’s uppermost level, we bowed
to the grand opera of a foreign city’s concrete
that we surveyed through sheer curtains, as if from a mezzanine,
and just like as from a mezzanine, forgot that those below
could just as easily look up to see: your shirt, resurrecting
your chest, and I, crouched in the corner playing at knots.
Who I have been has brought me to this worship:
like a brushstroke moves light across canvas,
you moved toward me, and tightened the nylon
to my thigh until they were one skin.