Romeo

The stars were right for Romeo: Opposites melding together like knees and thighs, crossing and uncrossing, like sunlight playing patterns upon trees, life waiting to be picked like an over-ripe crystal, hanging from green leaves.

The leaves cast a shadow upon her face. Her lips looked like strawberries. "What are crystals if not fallen stars?", she whispered. He uncrossed his palm from her thigh. She straightened her skirt, tired of playing the sun to his moon. "Daylight is boring", she whined, her lips twisting like vines. He plucked the grapes, rolled their cold flesh over his tongue, sucking the juice around the seeds, drinking the poison from their purple peels.

The stars were right for Romeo: Opposites melding together like knees and thighs, crossing and uncrossing, like sunlight playing patterns upon trees, life waiting to be picked like an over-ripe crystal, to be shattered beneath golden leaves.

Fragment: Got Stuck in My Mind

Do you have any experience acting?
No, but I have slept with a lot of men.
What does that have to do with anything?
Isn't acting the art of seducation?
Only if you sleep with the director to get the part.

She gave him a once-over and snorted: Well, that's not happening.

She didn't get the part, but he did take her out for a cup of coffee.

Once (2)

Once I wrote a story about vampires. You read it to me one night. I was spread out on satin sheets; your voice reverberated in the dark - I could feel your fingers kneeding into my back. I still used to write then, and in between kisses, we'd whisper love-poems. In the mornings, we had discussions about gender over coffee. "Eve was created to be Adam's eye-candy", and "I always thought Adam was kind of a douche-bag", our own midrashic musings shouted in between bits of strawberries that got stuck between our teeth, but you were no more than a habit, really: the slight grip of my fingers, the licking of lips, words that became breathing.

Is love no more than that, the sum total of time we spend together, minus the time we spend apart? Cold calculations like your physics homework - I always thought our relationship was more like the warm water, soft, and flowing, that left my hands chapped when I finished the dishes - your dishes.

Your fucking dishes. Me, the feminist, re-enacting a scene from some sort of 1950s movie. Now that's love baby - politics be damned! Put your hands a little higher, a little higher - I can almost feel the breaking of the glass.

Home

Guilt has golden-gilded edges,
on which you prick your finger.

You reach for a band-aid, and call it "love".
You go to sleep and dream of lillies.

With each snore, a new prick,
another drop of blood.

Soon your bed is a canvas of red,
with edges of gilded gold.

I guess you'll need a bigger band-aid.

L'chaim

"Sex is but a means to an end", he says.

I laugh. "That's just an excuse used by people who can't get laid."

He smiles and pours me a glass of wine. "So tell me about your boyfriend."

"Well, he's a lousy drunk, but he's a good kisser."

"Better than a good drunk but a lousy kisser".

"I don't know - is it?" I ask.

He sips the chardonnay slowly, like a swan dipping his beak into the water.

"You're very graceful", I say.

He laughs. "It's easy to be graceful when you're sober".

I shrug, shifting my glass from one palm to the other.

"Drink up", he says.

"L'chaim".

The twinkling of our glasses sounds like a gentle kiss.

Rabbit Stew

Where are the carrots?

You go groping down the rabbit hole,
with mud-browned knees: I feel your paws
on my neck, claws at my back,
like kisses. I breath in the scent
of your flesh, mixed with dust;
I cough your skin from my mouth.

Where are the carrots?

How do we measure our love
in the time of starvation?

I feel the dryness of your mouth;
your shedding fur lines
the pathway to the briar:

Beneath the bonfire, a girl licks her lips.
Her eyes gleam in the shadows.

Above the fire, a rusted cauldron.
Her father strokes the stew with his ladle.

Kisses.

I suck you in between my teeth -
you taste of cinnamon.


Where are the carrots?

Jeremiah 12

Twelve were the strands of your hair,
sweet the scent of your breasts.
Your arms were marble pillars
basking in the moonlight.

Twelve were the days of our love,
eternal, the days of our mourning;
your chest reeks of tears,
your arms are broken columns.

I trample the grass of your courtyard -
an eagle's garden, palace of caterpillars,
beds of royal corpses spread beneath my feet,
as my toes bask in the carpet of decay.

Twelve were the moons that counted our parting -
 dust layers itself over love that rises in red like the sun.
The cries of eagles have become our lullabies,
as we lie like prey: black specks on brown sand in a golden morning.