Orchids

Originally published in Outlaw Poetry (October 13th)

My body flat and white like the sands of Fernando de Noronha, your body dark and tan like an Amazonian rosewood and curving like Noronha’s dunes
Two people from far off places

I drank in the sound of your velvet voice
And you the gruffness of my own
The wine on both our lips a mere afterthought

Your leg raised under the table to rub mine beside you, and my hand lifted to rest at the tip of your dress
And with that, the bull and the rabbit danced their dance of a hundred thousand years

Our minutes turned to hours and our hours turned to days and our days turned to weeks
And with the weeks came my oaths of a thousand lifetimes

“I want to scale you like a fortress, penetrate your walls, and dwell in your castle of dripping wet desire

In the caverns of your soul lay the corpses of a thousand men
But I will walk through this cavern,
And know it inside and out
And knowing it inside and out, will be content to keep all its secrets to myself

There are no gods, but you are a goddess, my sweet
Imperfect and inconsolable though you sometimes are, and at other times unbearable

I await you in the still hours
Between darkness and light
As I did the first night”

The first night…
At the cantina
When I said to you “Quiero escribir poesía en tu cuerpo con mis labios”
In broken gringo tongue under a crimson moon

The first morning thereafter…
How the orchids on your window swayed from side to side
But not the same as your hips did on the way to the bath
Hypnotizing me like prey to Kipling’s Kaa

And oh how I wish you would devour me again!
Consume me ruthlessly and swallow me whole
How I wish for the return of the scratches on my neck and the feeling of your hands pulling at my beard
The half-kisses half-bites
But you exist now only as a memory, I am reminded
I am another corpse added to the rock
Helplessly watching another man exit the cavern I once dreamed to leave