Poetry
What happens to me when you laugh: my lips desire
your laughing lips; my hands desire your skin beneath them;
my mouth all of your playful mouth.
Your laughter unwinds the knots in my limbs,
it softens the hardness calcified on these poets’ bones,
your laughter shushes my nervous belly gnawing.
You laugh and all the worries of my world fall away.
You love like this: a headfirst love, an outright love,
a vigilant, attentive love,
a stubborn love, a headstrong love. You love
the way I have always wanted to be loved:
with all of your insides and with all of your outsides,
you love with your careful fingers;
you are always untangling the tangles of me.
These are the colors of your love: your lips
part from my mouth flush claret, your teeth beneath
my ear clip pearl, your hands wander blue
beneath my clothes. Your voice is citrine and daffodil,
your skin scours blush by desire’s rag,
you peak and shudder through saffron and indigo;
you give me a palette of lights and ask me to paint.
What I found in the earth at Brierfield:
shards of white china, a deer bone knife,
a slave mother’s beads carved by hand,
and what I found in the earth at Tannehill:
two thousand iron nails, door hinges,
hearth stones still scented with rain and earth.
In the clay, I even excavated myself.
My favorite constellation cannot be found
among Orion’s armament, nor the broad chest of Leo,
nor among the Ursas and their dippers.
My Little Love, eight stars, and this her story:
I uncovered her as the sun went down, traced her shape
with the tips of my fingers, memorized her even as she went away.
My Little Love, eight stars; freckles on the small of my love’s back.