Pleasure Dome. Yusef Komunyakaa

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      on leashes. See, look at me

      tear out handfuls of hair.

      Papa’s always quoting that brutal

      book, trying to get hills to march

      home. Your tongue lights

      the air. Tonight, I can’t help

      but hold your breasts till

      my mouth fills with honey.

      You’re dragging the dark

      waters in me with hooks,

      & I talk from under your clothes.

No Love in This House

      Tonight I touch your breasts.

      September’s fruit.

      Nipples, eyes of fire.

      I kiss you deep

      as a knife could go.

      I pull you out of your jeans.

      Black panties, red rose,

      my fingers find

      the center of you

      where the blues begin.

      I’m in a room of you

      where a white horse

      shockwaves. It’s hard to break

      away: flesh, wine, language.

      We curve into dance.

      When I drive myself into you

      you’re singing the name

      of a man in Rifle Gap

      with his cowboy boots propped

      on another woman’s kitchen table.

High on Sadness

      I think about you

      till you’re naked

      at a window waving goodbye.

      Till the bones come out,

      bright airplane

      on an assembly line.

      Violin bows, ribs.

      I think about you

      till a great beetle

      beams on six legs

      of unreason. I take you

      baroque ballerina

      into my arms for the last time,

      & your metallic feelers

      search the air.

      It’s always out

      in the next city

      of rooms filled with California

      Spiritual Sunshine incense

      I go, a sleepwalker

      on a cliff.

Sunbather

      She lies under July, a blue towel

      across her buttocks, her bare back

      new metal arched in a dark room.

      A sycamore guards her. Three crows

      in symmetrical branches

      watch their feathers fall,

      black leaves. Today is

      an 8″ ×10″ platinum photograph

      in an old man’s dresser drawer.

      The sky’s a slow fire,

      car lights over night ice.

      I close my eyes, concentrate,

      & try to remove the blue towel

      till the sun goes out.

Apprenticeship

      His fingernails are black

      & torn from blows,

      as if the hammer

      declares its own angle of reference.

      The young carpenter curses:

      “Awww, fuck! Sonovabitch! Dumb shit!”

      His girlfriend lowers her white dress,

      then moves away.

      She reappears nude,

      props one foot upon a red chair,

      looks him square in the eyes.

      Her skin glistens like a woman

      who’s made love all afternoon.

      Twenty-two stories up, he steps out

      over the beams like a man with wings.

Light on the Subject

      Hello, Mister Jack,

      make yourself at home.

      Here in Deadwood City

      our eyes flash back to

      knives on silver whetstones.

      Can I get you anything,

      perhaps a shot of Four Roses?

      In this gray station of wood

      our hearts are wet rags

      & we turn to ourselves,

      holding our own hands

      as the scaffolds sway.

      I can tell you this much

      Brother Justice, our faith’s

      unshakable, even if we rock stones

      asleep in broken arms.

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