if i were to let my sense of entitlement encourage me then, perhaps long ago, i would have unabashedly and unashamedly  began to complement your eyes—firstly—then your lips, your skin, the line of your hip, your breath, your tongue… your fire.

if i were any less a coward, i would pray this letter finds your eyes alone. but, being as i am, i can only confer upon it the title of prose poetry in the hopes of safe-guarding my anonymity from you, and yours from other eyes which happen across this page. 

if unafraid, i could birth words illustrating the quiet quiver in my chest when first our two gazes met; how fragile the potential pearl, the blossom between us, the water’s skin

whisper shatters bud 

without breath
mute tongue

dragging lips across the skin of an olive
and feet across cold ceramic tile

sipping warm sake
i sigh
_____________________________________________________________________

Sad Skin: Prose on a Flayed Grape*

if water’s skin is an empty sack
wrinkled as a scrotum
if the flesh of a detoned mammal
weighs 1/3 as much as the living animal
when eyeballs dance free of sockets
when teeth and tongue seek shelter from mouths
when flies root in roses
            and bees in shit
when poets are sober
i will press wine from my tumb


*I was once sure this poem was by Pablo Neruda. Now I have looked all over the internet for this translation of this poem, to no avail… I suspected Lorca, Marquez, even Rilke this is beginning to trouble me. I’m surely facing a translation issue.