Rituals

what does it matter?—we made not doing it a wonder

—Stuart Dybek

The most dangerous game, for me,is sex and syntax. Your hand, so familiar

and terrifying as family, reaches for my name,and then my navel, which is a cup of hunger,

always in that order. My hand drags after loss,after some inexact past. The wet mood lingers

erotic with the scent of a half-peeled orange,broken by a nasty thumbnail. The moment clicks

and disappears again before we attempt release.This hardened honey, this slow drip of joy.

Another spider approaches. And then I smash it.Smearing gorgeous little guts like black lotion.

Strange how desire is greedy and silent in stasis.Strange how two bodies can grow without branches.

And again. How do you diagram two broken bodieswithout parsing? Without penetration? Is this still

what I want? Another year. Another sip of goodbourbon, neat and decadent. Something like a lock

unlatches. Another hard world approaches withoutwater. Another hard world approaches without fur.

Another hard world approaches and approacheswithout punctuation, enters without sucking salt

from these two bodies, starved and pulsatingon the brink of so much touching and not touching.

I ache for grammar when it's bent and fluid.I ache for him, for her, and then for myself, always

in that order, last in lust—I hum. I bang. I bite.I touch myself, my many selves. If I whimper,

can I call it God? Oh God, please delay the verbs.Once, in bed, you finally gave me what I wanted,

but I did not want it anymore. The whipped creamslid from your cool nipples in strings of white

tears. See, I'd already eaten so much sugarthat day. I was so full and sick of it.