“Gaze”
Gaze
The first time / I kissed a woman / she was the wind / blowing in
on a night you least expect it / turning heads the way her daddy taught
her / always / restless / shuffling on slender legs / a chestnut mane
long fingers sucking down a cigarette / hungry,
I wanted to cradle her / already / the mother
not knowing what it meant / this wish / to feed / be fed by / someone
worrying, I was the same as all the men who wanted her / trying
to buy her / affection / cheap perfume and swank hotels / she was all street
and smarts / by then / she’d been around the block / outliving
her downtrodden mother and her drunken cop-father / she knew
an opportunity when she took one / nothing can prepare you
for the mean streets / like being raped by your father.
(I was) a girl / in love without / understanding / the clutch
in my groin was the speed with which a needle can
slam a vein / dissolved in ritual / hidden
behind the fading day / a light pink film / the cloak of blood-let
flooding the apartment. Outside, Melbourne
caught in its nine-to-five / together / we couldn’t stop
but we stopped time / the way / we caressed
the crook of each other’s arm / the translucent underside—
taut belly of a beast / a cold fish in its dying gasp.
I was upturned / capsized / hell bent / delivering myself
to evil / afraid of the men who recognized my want / and knew
a starving girl when they saw one / afraid I’d be caught / dead
by the man who craved my nineteen-year-old body.
At night, we roamed / the streets / scoured floodlit windows.
Inside, perfect / strangers shed their day / a hull of amber—
shadow puppets / empty armchairs / set tables / curtains split
to comfort / life
without a hole inside it. It must’ve been spring.
The two of us giggling and hushing each other,
unhooking hanging gardens from porches / petunias
and honeysuckle / daffodils, with their throats struck open
before / morning broke / surfacing the evidence / our crime
collected and left to die / we couldn’t care / for living
things. I thought a blackened spoon / a flame
could stave off / hunger / mistaking love for / her blue vein
hardening to my touch / mistaking tenderness for needle
precision / waiting for the blood-let /
fire-rush / for her to love me.
