My next partner will know that:
My gasp is church time –
How words strung together
Are elegy
To this right here [touch eyes]
[touch temple]
[touch heart]
[touch belly]
[touch hips with your fingers turned into the creases of your pelvis]
[touch toes]
[touch lips]
Yes, in that order.
Then touch other places if you’d like. Wherever you feel elegy.
Did you do it?
You understand
it’s coming.
The signs
When my breath slows to slip through bowed lips
When I groan, sigh, chew skin, get quiet, squint deep
Can you feel when I’m on fire?
Do you get
That I’m full of poetry?
Partner, I ask
You whisper words in my ear after
Moving poems into me:
yellow
licorice
eyeglass
press
– softer.