Landscape
Josh Booton
I love you, she said, meaning
why do you always have to be
like that. And he, turned
to the window--the loose tunings
of telephone wire, the half-drawn shades
across, a woman or man naked
from behind--thought,
after so many times, how
words mean more or less than
they mean to, are made up
of other words, agreements
for flux or inflection
or whole lives. So that
hotpot means that morning in Prague
when she burned her arm
and he mimed fire,
with his hands, to the young pharmacist
who gave him Astroglide
and her a scar, strangely the shape
of Czechoslovakia, to remember by.
Or why those nights,
he home drunk but happy,
she would listen to him
in the dark, taking off his clothes
and the whole evening--
the tipsy tables and forced jokes,
the brief signatures of smoke;
how the waitress called him
honey across the bartop's honey shellac,
the mile home--and think: watermelon.
Think, after so many times, how
nothing is pure or completely
lost. Each word to usher
the world in, each world
to make the words less sure.
Until there is nowhere to stand
except at the window
looking out on cars for miles
and think: desire.
Nowhere to turn but to her
through the black-earth scent of coffee,
the country blues from another room.
I love you, too, he said.
i miss poetry.
b
