On the left, I write an epic and on the curve of the right; a haiku. On her belly I build a city whose streets teem with peacocks, their thousand eyes watch over her. Between her legs I make a bed, I build a subway; I build a pyre that lights the city I have built on her belly.

On her back I project old silent movies; the flickering light makes her tremble. Her right arm is a snake that climbs up my spine; awakes me from sleep. Her left arm is a tree that reaches into the earth to placate the dead. Each foot is a bird that hovers over my head, as I hold her wrist down to the white fields of the bed.

She is between my legs, she takes me into her mouth; I lie back like a ship in a building storm. I become the crescendo of operas, a breath hovering. My body is a long sigh of silence, like the migrating monarch butterflies paralyzed by uncommon winds that rain down on the streets of Tehran. The sun warms us and we take hesitant flight.

There, a man with a pinhole camera takes our photograph that he wires to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We are two electric eels entwined like the filament of a lamp, lighting all of Paris.

Love arrives at my door
with a knock and a revolver.

“How much do you love me?”
she asks. I stutter—

and she soaks me in her sweat.
I feel rejuvenated,

and Love pushes me down,
buries me beneath leaves

and flowers.

“I love you this much…” I say,
and die peacefully—

while the ****** stumps
of my once-wings twitch

slightly.

We go off in a boat,
Love is captain, I am crew.

She now has a shiny hook
for a hand. She gestures me over:

“How do you love me?”

With perfect concentration,
I unscrew her hook,

tie the string of night to it,
and swing it up—

catching the open-mouthed moon.
With a quick tug,

I bring it down for her.

We lay on the water together,
watching the boat drift off—

smaller and smaller—
and Love and I

float for a lifetime or two,

watching satellites wink
as they fly by.
I ask her, “Love,

how much do you love me?”

“So much. That’s all I say,”
she answers.
“Sooooooo much!”

“But how? How do you love me?”

She smiles,
reaches for the light switch
on the other side of the sun—

CLICK.

She curls up next to me
in the darkest of dark,
in the blackest of black.

She spoons me close,
her good hand on my heart.

“This much,” she whispers,
“and this is how.”

I would have you hold me again,
but I am frightened.

The water fills the shower ankle deep
When I was small I swore it was possible

to go down the drain. Nothing she said
could convince me otherwise.  She was wrong.

I  need to move away from here.
My dog has become anxious

There are gunshots every night.
I swear she dreams of chasing the bus you left on.

She whimpers so loud, Sirius has started to complain.
I close my eyes and try to count 10 but can never make it

past six – I am worried  that when I close my eyes the North
Star looks for a way out.

I would hold you again, but I am uneasy.

Like that muggy august night when I saw
a coyote sulking and wet under a streetlight

on Sepulveda.  It was strange, no one was out.
So strange, you couldn’t believe it

but I shake all the time.

“Sometimes love is stronger than a man’s convictions.”*  
– Isaac Bashevis Singer


1.

There are wars, and rumors of wars—  
machineries, machinations  
of singular dark days,  

and clouds that hang  
like props above our city.  

We shut the windows,  
refuse to watch their play.  

Hungrily, we take refuge  
between each other’s legs.  

How comforting it is  
to love without armies,  
without tanks,  

without generals of reasoned love.

---

2.

There are wars, and rumors of wars—  
machineries, machinations  
of singular dark days.  

From the narrow street, they see us  
wrestling with an angel—  

the tug of limbs, the tangle of hair.  
You whisper low,  
your seditious talk of love—  

as my callused hands get caught  
in your low moaning—  

while I hold you down  
to the bed,  
my captive.  

The occupation has begun—  

your occupied body,  
my country of ardent prayers.

---

2.

There are wars—  
machineries, machinations  
of singular dark days.  

The soldiers are leaving for the front.  
Not us.  

We stay behind,  
to wage our war  
of tenderness.  

They leave this morning.  

Applaud their sad theater—  
the warships, the planes.  

Soon,  
letters will arrive  
without them.  

A few men will return—  
gaunt, less than before—  
with more silence,  
less dancing.  

And when they do,  
our war will have ended  
under a flag  
of white bed sheets.  

Only a little blood.  

Victorious,  
we’ll write love letters  
on each other’s bodies.

The Lone Ranger writes a letter
to his Tanto, he writes,

things are not as they used to be.
I am as useless as an Iron Lung.

Riding around in his Ford Pinto
The Lone Ranger looks for anything
to do − the one working headlight
finding vultures on the side

of the road.
Driving through the night
scanning the radio for WXYZ

This long prairie night of his soul.
finding no one to save
he buys a *******
with a case of silver bullets.

She holds him like a little boy
Rocks him back and forth.

They don’t have ***.

He cries in her arms,

“I’m a man in a boy’s costume,”
“I am a jaw bone at a wedding.”

Later that evening
The Lone Ranger writes another letter

Dear Tanto,

Things are not as they used to be.
I am as useless as mouth without teeth.
I wish you were here.

Sincerely, Lone.

She buys a torn and faded map
All the continents are misshapen
The rivers smudged.Her faith is
inexhaustible. So here I am,
the bridge she will never cross.

The cataratic mapmaker rubbing his
eyes knowing only one route.

I stand on the other side
watch her put on a mask
so we will know exactly

how she feels, watch
her turn away
with map in hand

watch her
as she gets
smaller
and smaller.

I am on the otherside,
sitting on a chair,
in an empty room

in an abandoned house,
the windows have been boarded shut.

With my finger I erase
the ring of water
left behind by her glass.

It is true that I loved

her.  I am gaunt
and my ribs are showing.


copyright c.a. leibow 2007
Published in Rat Fink Review