Please more harlequin,
less sweatpants. More seismograph
less cardiograph. Speak only
in questions like, Do bees itch?
Can the sky hear?
Do horses rate each other’s shoes?
Feather me like cherry trees with longing.
That’s not original.
You’re limited by my limits.
Should we fight more often?
Invent sexual positions?
Is that cliché too—
sex the only home
for imagination?
Curiosity, is it?
The world dulls
on its screens. Seeming known
yet only always seeming.
We fret because passion’s
a flower not a tree.
Like grieving a bird
for not being a jacket.
Curiosity, I’ve gone astray.
I meant to ask you to superglue
me to discomfort, to riddles,
to a planetary lack of inhibition.
If that means buying a sexual trapeze,
terrific. I’ll teach petunias
magic tricks, ask at last for a translation
of my heart’s hieroglyphics.
Make my spine flexible as rain.
