/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.