Note:
the italicized section in the 7th frame is taken from Stanley Burnshaw's The
Seamless Web.
In fetal-curl their bodies
alight
his left arm about her torso, hers down the side of the twin mattress welling in — still
the sense of, Which arm is holding in place the first
who’ll fall from sleep?
Held/beheld asleep with a raw
leer not her own, narcissistic —
awe-ironic to an addled awakening
-then-finding a stranger
lies behind her
astraddle, as though left there
by a woman-not-herself.
Presuming all, he is
without covers, without memory
at the dark mercy of a pale and face
-less woman lowering against him,
to/from which/whom
his eyelids, moist as lips, lose
this dream as well?
Footsteps and voices out
-side the door allure
them
from the other side of sleep to the
picturesque bedscape with
-in an unfamiliar room, each to
awaken with a stranger memory
left in place of itself.
5 waking
senses surface rampant to the
invasive tarriance
of a stranger’s penis still in
-side her — as a lucider
light unveils a spread of fingers
lukewarm, clamped crab-like/grass root
-ing beyond the smooth of her
stomach.
Hungover a backside bent double and red
hair splattered over both pillows;
awaken/taken aback, relieved
and repelled that some
one’s breath
-ing backs into his chest: a knotted spine
pulsing down-on-him like an artery
while the arm off the side looks missing.
Basic
and electric rhythms of the brain
to which one’s entire organism
desires
its return when disturbed by crisis
—
1st-move lovers
lean off bed’s waysides
to abandon dawn/ing bodies’
harmony, for private music/’s
primordial safety.
