/um/

With aplomb, her green eyes
imbibe wonder while
her brilliant life resumes

on the screen behind
my chrysalis eyes:
those reverie cocoons.

I lovingly anatomize
our apartment,
a recovered tomb:

Fire escape coffee,
oranges and ash trays comprise
my Proustian perfume

for drawn curtain sex,
red exit-sign
and love-illusion illumined;

Perspiration paces
from our sofa, naked,
to our cigarette smoke bedroom;

Books laid on marble,
Black lace bras, her auburn hair
and freckled flesh festoons

white wood floors
and walls, bare but for
what may be exhumed;

Her sumptuous name
on scattered papers,
off whisper-lips, issues

two syllables
of symmetry,
its divine spelling assumed.

My metonymic muscle
touches palate twice:
a gliding tongue consumed

by my vowel drawn,
smoke-ring mouth
rhyming Ulalume.

Cunnilinguistics

Overtures
to silent pleasure
yearning lingual urges.

Fille en fleur,
flume doused fire:
the profuse sudden surge.

Colonnades,
a sacred place,
relief of torrent rapture.

Clitoris
of pistil beauty
and spring rain dampened after.

Lambent lips
reposing over
her stomach’s lily languor.

Cheek bone on hip:
vellus hairs
and eye lashes are dancers.

Though the sighs
of other lovers,
lust heaving in their chests,

seashell thighs
clasped firm around
a cove of ocean breath,

reach animated
exclamations,
it’s sandy cinema sex,

sans spray,
and I mourn
the way her waves

arrested my rhythm.