An Offering to the Lover Who
Will Leave for Mexico City
(Five Movements in a
Matter of Weeks)
I.I took you as a lover
bore you like a child
I bit the leather between the
teeth
grit my thighs together and
squeezed you from me
like Athenstomached from the head of Zeus
I cleaved you from my skull
you repaid me
sly smiles lit from boyish charm
and free spirit
such a young winged-thing, you!
the leather bracelets that hug
your wrists
is what did me in
that and how you took your
whiskey
silver rings wrapped around the
thick fingers
of your flighty pianist hands
my gaze leapt from your face to
the vibrancy of those hands
you were too soon.
I gazed with a jealous eye
let you go before I owned you
knowing that I could destroy you
these, my bevy of bad habits.
I pitied myself then and hid my
face
the benign Medusa
the Mercurial Me
the sleepy housewife
I have not yet molted.
you were too good to me
my heart much too heavy and
Atlas
himself could not grunt this
work
your feet were swift as you
trampled about the globe
I wondered at you and ate your
stories of world
women and decadence
free will to gaze upon Picasso,
Goya, Kahlo
breezily you walked the halls of
Rome
paid a philosophical visit to
Caesar and ate your sandwiches
beneath the long shadow of the
Sistine
popped an olive into your mouth
II.
sip wine at high noon for me
feel every smooth groove of the
centuries-old
cobble stone beneath your
hungering feet
make your legs mine
young student the sun shines
across your forehead
I can not take this from you
your worldly accounts I keep
like rich cocoa
a slow melting coffee bean coats
the inside of my mouth
remember that slow night after
the pub?
here in the States?
I led you to my bed then
the damask slid over our bodies
creating us silk
thank you Egyptian cotton and
excited linen
thank you crooning song and
foolish wine
thank you dizzy moon
thank you drink and food and
grape
Dionysus you are benevolent
thank you life
for what you gave when you gave
it
I needed it then
we shared as the peacocks do
flashing our bright-eyed
feathers
swaying sheer silk between the
royal columns
I fluttered about like a nervous
Leda and
you bent your neck like the swan
III.
sweet boy, I must rise now
this cow-heavy body is required
to meet the morning chore
my child cries out for me and I
am a modern woman
through and through
Amazon, I am
I rise with the sun like a
farmer
carry baskets of fish and bread
atop my head
I run like the Mayan mother
flaming torch and upside down
child
duty calls
my child
split from the pain
and that long-ago
other man
IV.
(rationality sets in)
I must turn the sheets and
finish the laundry now
drink the coffee and be the poet
I must live out divorcee as best
I can
I best go tend to
the ever-present light bill
as the mailman has already
come and gone
forgive the mundane
for we know what we do
as you strap your feathered
sandals
buckle shiny shoes around young
heel
remember to pay me with a pile
of coins
leave me this
gold and silver
leave it there upon
my stolid dark, wood
bedside table
a small visit in the mindfs eye
give me only that
(please)
next time you touch Lorca
next time you brunch with Neruda
next time you dine in Morocco
from bowl to right hand to mouth
and young hungry lip
next time you trample about,
big sandaled feet and open palm
against
the big globe I always wished I
knew
next time
think of me as I fold the
laundry and bare my breast
my child is hungry again
for I am stolid and will always
bear fruit
for her
V.
you were too soon for me.
I have not yet molted
(please think of me)
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