Return flight

Two poems writ­ten on the way back.

1. Hear­ing and wanting.

Pump­ing a straw between the plas­tic throat of his lid,
his wife said, oh, it sounds like you’re moaning.

One hand com­presses the blinds, tugs the fold­ing organ;
a hid­den twig lat­tice;
a three walled paper flap;
a mouth a throat.

A cold light crouched elbow to toe inside;
a box left at her friends house clicks on and off, clicks
drag­ging pic­tures between its dry cells.

In hel­mets, body­suits, drawn over with glow-in-the-dark
pen, free­ways pump­ing light in cir­cuits
from ear to ear.

The cos­tumes of men who fight in our dreams.
The cos­tumes of peo­ple with our faces, gray, vis­ited by
our faces on sets and, later, screens.

Begin­nings, like water­cold fan­tasies, unsure
but promis­ing note to note. Not really
believ­ing, but pump­ing the air, for the fin­gers, first.

It could be that you were bet­ter when you started,
and could be bet­ter if you start again.

Pump­ing a straw between the plas­tic throat of his lid,
His wife said, oh, it sounds like you’re moaning.

2. Want­ing and still wanting.

the bull’s skirt
braid that sags from his chin
the dou­ble skull, the soft open
nos­trils. He took him by the ring
and moved it neatly
like a spoon across the tongue,
imag­in­ing the pull feels some­thing
like sen­si­tive cor­ners in the jaw.
It turned him, the bull turned him over
And stabbed widely with each horn
Like a fish flap­ping dry.
In the yard it spills hay from
Truckbeds, slumps against loose piles.
He comes back to feed and touch
Again, and feels his fist inside a nostril.