I want to be the stones to your riverbed,
pipeclayed satellites
so that you move forever about my body
and I sturdy along the soft banks of your heart.

And to the softer parts,
to the dunes worn by rushing water and starfish,
sulking and easing their way under your skin,
as they do,
to those submerged shores
I want to knead,
smoothing over every inch of you
until you forget how heavy debris can settle.

Over the cliff of our bed
I am a waterfall.
My backbone curls into rainbows,
my fingers are little pink salmon mating in the spray.
Your shoulder is my shoal
onto which I am unsheathing black-sand claws;
a lazy gull stretching the winter from her wings.

From here, there's a whole sky spread like
blueberries and jam, like
fields of stars and I'm sprinting
across them, east, each a little posy
on the palms of my feet.
or some angel, thighs apart, grape lips,
her shoulders tossed,
wan and against a pool of clouds
babbling nonsense like a child, or
an oil painting of the sun
over Rio, or over Borneo or Milan.
She's lifting my face
eyes not even meeting mine because
they're so far off and lost
soft and lazy
about them the reflection of
turquoise is earth brown.

On the street in Tokyo one summer
a woman seized my shoulders,
her coarse hair as coal as night and hugging her face
so that when she opened her mouth
the darkness and roundness of it all
was as if a black hole were to engulf me entirely.
Good nature and sake
dried in spittle on her lip,
she cupped my *******
and fed me the Universe
thick from her own swollen *****.

I want to be the stones to your riverbed,
pipeclayed satellites,
so that you move forever about my body
and I sturdy along the soft banks of your heart.

Most nights, I'm on tip toes, hands out
plucking away stars and planets and the moon
rounding up whole galaxies in my palms
and throwing the universe at you in armfuls,
blushing,
because I want to give you everything I possibly could give another
until you are full and smiling.
If only to hear you laugh the way you do.
If only to feel your voice, low and honeyed
in "sweetheart"s or "baby"s or "Shayla"s.

All dimples and curls and pigeon toes when sitting,
purple; and gold dangles
light-skinned girl, dark-skinned girl
depending on the translation
hips swivel to the left, ******* that follow
in commanding black bras
and matching lacy *******.
Rolling backwards into handstands for most *******,
else on the loveseat
whipping love back and forth between the swell
beneath the shorts
and beneath the outer layers,
the lip gloss smiles and masquerades
beneath the veins and bone and guts:
there's a naked, quivering heater
switched on all year long
its dainty wiring peeking out,
the head of the cord puckered.