Sunday, September 19, 2010

Long

My friend Kath and I like to joke that the best way to get over being cockstruck about one human is to get under another. We both know that is only often true.

‘A good fit’ sighs he, tucking his knees behind mine,
innocent how that makes me frown,
because it’s true, in a merely measured way:
ratio of thighbone to shin, let’s say.
Unlike you with me. Us two, we
mismatched most comically
not primarily in that your hip curves in my waist when I stand close,
but most I suppose in that, thus pressed, my body these days must long alone,
and uselessly, to close those intangible geometries
sculpted by such visceral surprises
as how deliciously decisive
your go-with-the-flow
daytime persona
became when
we flowed
into bed.
Not least how skillfully you wielded your substantial cock from an unspoken certainty of equality between us,
implicit in your most self-absorbed minutes.
It wasn't so much the gruff pillow talk about movement strategy, available already any day over tea,
as the secret of your milky marble winter skin.That shade on the guy I couldn’t bring myself to date was merely off-putting*.
But on you - for me, you unrolled a bolt of long, linen luminosity to sink in and swim.

How could he know that he'd only said
that he didn't fit me like you had;
that his neatly nestling knees,
faintly intimating airless domesticity,
would merely rouse my hunger for those inscrutable spaces
where, mysteriously,
I did not fit you in any of the places
where it had seemed you fitted me.

1 comment:

  1. Jislaik. This poem. It works away at itself in the basement of my brain while I'm trying to work. Trying on alternate words. Rummaging around for other rhythms. Then LEAPS out just as I feel i'm starting to concentrate and

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