The pandering after a clutch
that was the trigger, the found poem, the surmise –
bow-legged bravado & all that
hope for deep erotica
shimmying;

candles burning next to the radiator
melting wonky into
flaming trees
of stir & settle;

& love on the wood floor
a shoehorn splinter of love
mortally seeming last chance though
really – Not.

The woman’s later kisses
are a murmur of ecstatic condolences.
The man, prettily alive, strokes shoulders & falls
summer-thriving asleep.

*

You’d keep him if
you could you think,
at the same time
not even believing
yourself.

More correctly you’d keep
the self you become here
lying all there
next to him.

None of this has
a thing to do with
committing emotional
fraud.

*

Years later in one of those dreams
where all the players have
the wrong names, wrong faces

I recognize his hand holding a tea pot from Tibet
extending out of the sleeve of a homeless woman
who hasn’t allowed touching in
a decade.

I have the most intense urge to kiss her,
drink the limp green tea
straight from the spout
spent leaves
& all…



©2007 by Lisa Gordon
previously published in Poetry SZ