(but this is an excerpt)*

"...There she is.
Lover has been wearing the same sneer
since the dawn she was drawn from the womb;
only today,
I notice it has softened, faded.
It is even more perfect.

She had the cerise lips of Calliope,
pensive and piquant.
I never saw them pursed or closed. Instead,
the corners of her mouth curled into parenthesis
around some sardonic remark about to be made –
yet all this time,
I had never heard her speak a word.

Exposed below the weight of the cosmos,
I imagine curled-up dreaming foxes in their dens
and I close my eyes
and she fades into existence. Clarity
in crisp blue jeans,
poised with hips sweeping up sensual imaginings
from a corpus of creative possibilities.

My lover is standing on a cold brick sidewalk
of a city affixed firmly to the soles of her
black suede boots — as if the earth
would fall out from beneath us
if I were to lift her up.
The profile of her face is obscured by
strokes of deep mahogany tresses,
woven with striations of brushed brass. I study her
smooth and flush skin,
the curve of high cheekbones, and the gentle bend
of a gloved wrist
as she tightens her black scarf..."