Solicitation

He tells me that I am beautiful
and that he is willing to pay for
my body. There are no words
spoken aloud but the chorus is
insidious in its movement like
gossip through the slim crack
of window or the quiver inside
a hornet’s nest. I reread his
message because I too have needs;
can you blame me for that?
I consider what it means to be
beautiful to another man, how
if I closed my eyes his mouth
could be the soft gulp of ocean
welcoming a river home, how
his hands might be the hands
of any man I’ve ever craved in
the dark and lonely hours when
I too am unwanted. He tells me
how generous he can be for my time,
that time which snakes down drains
and leaves a gasp in its wake.
The sharp choke of absence, the swift
exit of pleasure. My eyes are
a sundial tracking the world’s descent,
as if it’s true: there’s no time like
the present. Who am I to hold contempt
for a man naming his price?
He says I am beautiful, the way a jackal
sings out to the night. What is my price
if not the threshold of desire, or
the warmth of a tongue forgetting?

 

Elegy of the Jack-O-Lantern

You dispose of the old jack-o-lantern,
that oozing vigil now grown soft
with past tense, dormant and unlit.

My throat tightens. How the city forgets itself;
a cold-snap rides in on the wagging tail
of October, and suddenly

our gray avenues are the emptied
lobby of a funeral parlor: aware
of the living, but more keenly their absence.

Please, do not mind that I cling
more tightly to you tonight in our
cramped bed with its aching box spring;

when the falling daylight loses its way,
I am afraid I’ll do the same. Afraid
that this body once so full of heat

will become another soft thing you
surrender. Touch me, where the flesh
has waned and softened too; it is still

yours to hold. Can’t you remember
the way I filled our shared dark with
fleeting warmth on those nights

when you needed it most? Do I not
still have some light left yet to give?

See, how we forget ourselves.