sarah maclay – drunken library

NIGHT TEXT

Let’s imagine I’m translating something to you–
you, asleep, or sleepless and naming
that third place–between–

with the tips of your tapering fingers–

I don’t know the language.
It bends.

In the mind–in that strangely shared chamber–
that is, I mean, in your hands,

where you show me those scenes of confusion and flight
with such intimacy, and don’t know it–

even sans color, sans liquor, sans shape,
we are twins. Fraternal. Unknown.

The moon, invasive, huge,
lunging in through the windows,
makes no exceptions–

It’s true: it will never happen / you’d be surprised.

—as in, pre-flutter, that kingdom of semi-purpleness— should I

say dome of— that area of anti-limp, lawless, drunk on your

fingering, unfingering— that omnivore, oh, eating now your—

even your branches, iceless, anti frozen, gazelle flying toward the

twin kingdoms of your cheekness (more at “flying buttress”),

nearly periwinkling now— that perpetrator of the semi-grunt,

grunt, instigator of the groanful demi-flood of— flutter, flutter,

post-flutter— gorge of neomauve, rich canal of sunsetish plush,

now unguardedly sub-fuschia; that private brandied eyelash

batting at you in its brashest postcool queenness, plump and

succulent as a plum—

—-The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present, 2008

Tag Archives: sarah maclay