feet cupped like sleek hands praying

at the base of each other’s spines.

And when something lifts within her

toward a light she’s sure, once again,

she can’t bear, she opens her eyes

and sees his face is turned away,

one arm behind him, hand splayed

palm down on the mattress, to brace himself

so he can lever his hips, touch

with the bright tip the innermost spot.

And she finds she can’t bear it —

not his beautiful neck, stretched and corded,

not his hair fallen to one side like beach grass,

not the curved wing of his ear, washed thin

with daylight, deep pink of the inner body.

What she can’t bear is that she can’t see his face,

not that she thinks this exactly — she is rocking

and breathing — it’s more her body’s thought,

opening, as it is, into its own sheer truth.

So that when her hand lifts of its own volition

and slaps him, twice on the chest,

on that pad of muscled flesh just above the nipple,

slaps him twice, fast, like a nursing child

trying to get a mother’s attention,

she’s startled by the sound,

though when he turns his face to hers —

which is what her body wants, his eyes

pulled open, as if she had bitten —

she does reach out and bite him, on the shoulder,

not hard, but with the power infants have

over those who have borne them, tied as they are

to the body, and so, tied to the pleasure,

the exquisite pain of this world.

And when she lifts her face he sees

where she’s gone, knows she can’t speak,

is traveling toward something essential,

toward the core of her need, so he simply

watches, steadily, with an animal calm

as she arches and screams, watches the face that,

if she could see it, she would never let him see.

Kissing

They are kissing, on a park bench,

on the edge of an old bed, in a doorway

or on the floor of a church. Kissing

as the streets fill with balloons

or soldiers, locusts or confetti, water

or fire or dust. Kissing down through

the centuries under sun or stars, a dead tree,

an umbrella, amid derelicts. Kissing

as Christ carries his cross, as Gandhi

sings his speeches, as a bullet

careens through the air toward a child’s

good heart. They are kissing,

long, deep, spacious kisses, exploring

the silence of the tongue, the mute

rungs of the upper palate, hungry

for the living flesh. They are still

kissing when the cars crash and the bombs

drop, when the babies are born crying

into the white air, when Mozart bends

to his bowl of soup and Stalin

bends to his garden. They are kissing

to begin the world again. Nothing

can stop them. They kiss until their lips

swell, their thick tongues quickening

to the budded touch, licking up