Flesh

Every bliss is built this way, a hollow thing,

with many entrances, with blood pumping

a live tongue and limber torso, a fine sweat rising in.

We dirty ourselves up. We leave our print.

The night sky  ’tis a lozenge that cuts through the larded mind.

How I am inside I can scarce encompass it.

Eros sleeps with the windows open to uncoffin the room,

the wind blowing across the bed, trees scarecrowing the sky.

Congratulations. You scored a heat.

It’s safe to say we lived for this back then.

In Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Gowanus—

Eros travels everywhere in its morphine case.

And again our clothes are on the floor.

Did you come? I am hiding behind this language.

What if I just went and said it

direct face to face unblushing.
More Poems by Deborah Landau