let that fever play

1. 17
   Nov
   

   poem I wrote for seminar. the spacing may not come out right, but I still like it.

   
   

   Asymmetry

   I was once in love. Like red on white

   I spattered my heart for you across the sky

   in a pulsing full moon surrounded

   by residue droplets: stars.

   My mouth went numb tracing the divots and bumps of your name so I tried

   being quiet till you found me (always behind the curtains).

   My love was not a blue-tinged early morning:

   it kicked, it banked sharply and asked for more

   or less.

   And I was that jealous thing that hisses and whines

   so I craved you like sugar in coffee

   (or a side of cherries)

   and I missed the empty spaces of your ears.

   
   

   But you were once in love as well

   and whispered to the worms about

   sun rays on skin. A heat that is better

   (than tomato soup) in winter, because it is inside everywhere

   and not just your stomach and hands.

   You fell into the curves of feet on feet, the points

   of elbows, and backs of knees. Your camera

   pleaded with me to be still or wait (anything, anything but waver).

   You wanted to keep the moments like fireflies in a jar,

   but they insist on flying and escaping their prison of clarity.

   And your fingers were mountains eroding

   down the keys as time sped

   forward with the treble clef

   
   

   Our ribs lay stacked on each other like

   the pile of books that we kept in the corner and forgot

   with the coming of the dust. And we twisted over and out

   into hurricanes of sheets and hair

   and a musty room that would not leave us

   alone with our thoughts but

   beat them into our brains with the pounding

   footsteps of the upstairs neighbors. We rolled

   ourselves in evening dew to wait for day and rot the floors.

   So I sneered and you loved and you yelled and I loved

   And we could not match our reflections

   to all the mirrors in our house.

   And we remembered how we used to lie here (and want nothing).

   And we tried

   not to look at each other.