Wednesday, July 13, 2011

it was at that moment (desire in a time of absence)

it was at that moment (desire in a time of absence)


“Alone, Franny lay quite still, looking at the ceiling.
Her lips began to move, forming soundless words, and they continued to move.”
Franny, J. D. Salinger

“drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots. . .
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all”



it was at that moment
a nondescript second silent as fingertips tracing a collar bone

churning up through her email
about last night’s dream of lions deer hunted and flooding

like a Salvador Dali painting
rising from the pages of an apocalyptic Faulkner novel

it was at that moment
burying him in the instantly past blink of thought

that he craved the curve of her knee
to brush his face against inhaling deeply the smell of her

believing that his rush of desire
could conjure her from the memory of her ribs beneath his palm


his was a life in outline
the space inside the chalkline
at a murder scene or children’s drawings on a sidewalk

but the fullness of her
standing there in his mind’s eye
short black robe loosely tied exposing neck to breastbone

as she planned the things
she would wear as carefully
as clipping a baby’s tiny tiny fingernails that first time

this is what filled him in to the edges
filled him up with living and believing
blood bone and oxygen like desire in a time of absence


absence is a thing defined against that which is

the distance between that can (should) be travelled
the time lived past and lost that stands like marble
the absence now against the memory and longing

sometimes alone in a room filled with artificial light
he closes his eyes to create the darkness of solitude
and clings to memory
like dreams of lions deer hunted and flooding

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