|
TOGETHER, THEY FALL
She is thinking of an album
full of gilt-edged holes, a peep-show
perspective of teasers and
tormentors opening on a landscape
that smells of dead fires,
of marble dust, of powdery paper.
He is thinking of a woman
whose ankle rests on her knee as she
slips a stocking onto her foot.
He thinks of something sweet she has
in her mouth: a hazel dragée,
a candied fig, a piece of macaroon.
She is thinking of chalcedony,
layered blood red under skin color.
She thinks of her own skin,
of her own transparency, of her own
not quite satisfactory profile
despiteously gouged out of the stone.
He is thinking of many women
and of an index of epithets: brazen,
cool, docile, haughty, suave,
tempestuous. He is thinking of a tent
in the desert, a room in a tower,
a gateway into a walled city, a tomb.
   
|
