Rumor of Cortez

What Late at Night He Wants from Eve

49 What Late at Night He Wants from Eve Inseparable—you know this—yet you drag me to the brink of your mouth, the ripple that is your skin and the ripple beneath your skin. I’ll wait for you where the sigh joins bone as in the old days inside the earth, from there, follow the length of every newer world, serve up that “us” you think so much of—mossy and numb with want—so you can rest your knees here in the seven downfalls of the infinite slope, and so they hurt us less. You die with laughter and shake with pleasure, in tremor. Offer the puffed friedcake, flour with butter, with butter. You’re teasing the peasant in me who never forgets on waking to kiss your mouth, each breast, each breast again, please oh truculent God, thus days of this insist leading this poor man through the wilderness with his useless eyes of the alien vigil, and you listen while I hum my bubblings over, or wait still— wait until there’s almost nothing missing— and my heart ignites with wanting and the grasses bend and turn to gold, and time breaks free its mortal leash, illusions singe my beard, and something bends my knee. ...