Romance Dialectic, and: Ferris Wheel, and: At the Canadian Medical Center in Prague

Romance Dialectic

You are particles of wind
the door separates when it closes.
I am the door that pushes you
in both directions as I fit
into the wall.

You have counted the pores
of a chicken egg and calculated
breaths sucked through the shell.
Impatience caused me to devour
every seed of a green apple
and then, to feed you the stem.

I curl seductively,
a fallen hair
on a tight black shirt.
You crease
gently, the soft lines
of a lush upper lip.

You shouldn't trust
my prints on a doorjamb.
One smudge, and the whirls
lose their oily grip. But still,
you hold the brush
and spread dust.

I never counted
anything past ten. You should
count backwards. Start now.
You might approximate me.

Ferris Wheel

On the Ferris wheel last night,
I saw the sheetglass skyscrapers
threaded with neon light
three miles south when we hit the apex.
For a moment, I wanted that nightmare
where the Ferris wheel stops and I am stranded
in the top car, the sway, the eternal halt
some technical problem and I am never coming
down. Your lips massaged my sun-
stained shoulder, rifted my thoughts. As we reclined
against paint-chipped metal, I closed my eyes
to the night and opened my mouth to you, wished
the seat would give to the press of my back.

At the Canadian Medical Center in Prague

no one cries. A girl with fox-fur-red pigtails
lifts her dress to reveal bears on her panties.
Her brother crashes Hot Wheels into the wall,
makes wet explosions. Saliva spots his gray T-shirt.
No sign of emergency
as the receptionist offers the mother
forms. The women's voices peak
and ebb in French.

The doctor's skin is the color
of pumped breast milk –
ghost-white with a lick of blue.
He leads me down a dirt path
to the grey body
of the examination room
and onto the bed, palled
in sterile paper.

My breasts tuck
around the stethoscope
as the doctor listens for the crush
and uncrush of my heart muscle.
Last night, I found this clinic
in my student handbook:
inexpensive, staff fluent
in English. This morning, from the dorm,
two trams and a metro ushered me here.

The doctor holds out the prescription,
explains the risks, tells me to expect
bleeding. He leaves without
holding the door.

The receptionist waits
for my credit card
to go through. She plumps her lips,
thickening the painful fuchsia.
The waiting area fills
with dense quiet. The mother
and her small, breakable children
are gone.