There are men
with loud voices

I've been taught
to fear since birth.

If the intermittence
of skin flashing between
two articles of clothing is
where seduction occurs

then where is the
****** gaping cloth
of a yell?

Is it in the cavernous tongueless space
of parted lips: in some silent inky
strident echoing taste
or
in the tightness of vocal
chords pulled taut, the strain of
raised forehead and neck veins?

There's a weight in
my chest like a weight
in his bed, heavy and
unsatisfied and
thinly veiled.

I think somehow
the look on my face
must be a pleasing design:

a familiar retraceable
state: a reminder that
I don't mind him,

I know my place:
in a small, quiet space,
in his arms when its late,
on the drip of the spit on the tip of
his tongue: a flash of flesh over pale teeth:
a site of intermittence: in a hesitation

a fearful hesitation