I awaken to the rough sex of boxcars
coupling, uncoupling, having fallen asleep
to the soughing of mourning doves, putty
dollops with pure voices, their rodomontade
of loss. On the back road someone’s driving
up and down, his amped-up bass line drubbing
my peace. Soon we’ll see each other after
our longest absence. Our hair will have grown
to our napes, and I wonder if you’ll be
wearing clothes I’ll find familiar in shape
and smell, and if we’ll kiss more awkwardly
than the time you risked my first refusal.
I surprised you then with my open mouth.
Which of us will startle into intimacy?

Which of us will startle into intimacy
into a kind of half-awakening,
as the breath of the few resident cows
on a moonless night stirred me out of dark,
impatient thoughts and made me laugh
at my own pretensions. The beasts harrumphed,
and in their fairy tale I was the fool
who traded one of them for magic beans
and a beanstalk jutting into the clouds.
There was the deep grass, all a ruminant
could ever need. Our love’s terrestrial,
even grounded, where we might safely graze.
Even grounded, where I might safely graze,
I long to stir things up. Can frenzy be
behind us? For instance, your wild dancing?
I don’t mean just self-parody, you vamping
to a Prokofiev suite, me laughing
at your antics. I mean, dear, bump and grind,
slow-dance lust, everything short of fucking
on the dance floor. And this display in public,
since your face is like a carnival mask—
a satyr’s smile extending ear to ear
beneath that aquiline nose, however
broken. For too long you’ve avoided things
bacchanalian. Dance with me, lover.
We can do it without drugs, stone sober.

We can do it without drugs, stone sober
though I’m likely to add red wine to the mix.
You know me—a maenad from way back
but never one who went so far as you.
Well, as they say, we both have histories
we revisit now and then. Mendocino,
for example, the bar and dancehall
that you drove me to—closed up (it was morning).
You’d arrive there from the city years ago,
chasing pussy. Your palpable nostalgia
made me queasy. A certain little Irish
girl was often cited; her house, her child.
I thought “too much information.” Is there
such a thing as retrospective jealousy?

Such a thing as retrospective jealousy
wastes too much bile, I know. I’m in detox
from that stuff, though truth be told I can’t quite
get enough of yours, feigned or real. A man
comes up in conversation and you need
the who, the what, the when. Soon I’ll run out
of stories and invent like Scheherazade,
keep you poised on that delicious fulcrum
between having and desire. (Read Carson’s
Eros for the “analyse du texte”). Mark,
now let’s be serious. I promise not
to play you for a fool. I ask the same
of you. In my presence you will always be
(read Donne) the center of my universe.

Read Donne. The center of his universe
was fixed as he went voyaging. For us
the shoe is, so to speak, now on my wayward foot.
Old homebody, you won’t consider
Italy or even Greece. Wanderlust
is in my genes (unlike the other kind,
residing in my jeans, soon to be quelled.)
But there is that phrase of yours—“go with”—
you use a lot, in fact, invited me that way
to our first concert date. Go with, go with,
whither thou go with I wish you’d say.
Although for now these absences provoke
more poetry than our propinquity. Donne,
that errant metaphysical, once proved it.

The errant metaphysical once proved
a perfect landscape for desire: the soul
and body first removed, then joined back up
in perfect symmetry. But impatient
with duality, I’d rather sidle
up to you in Union Station, pull you
to me. I’ve longed for you so long no
witty trope will do. Let’s get to the hotel—
an imperfect room awaits; we will fit
inside of it, inside ourselves, each other.
The medium is distance, the method,
eros. Yet I’d rather be in your arms,
here, than writing poems about you, alone,
awakening to the rough sex of boxcars.

Fonder, Susan Gubernat