for Grace A.
Our island game masters, wrapped up in hair, gate dogs of what
lonely they know, invite fleurettes to placid ponds of lily pads; to wash
wring dry their thoughts like underwear.
Vijinie's bloom, field testing like a poem, bared totems for bead
fingers; for migrant pain killers, 24 hrs Open to suggestion.
Nerve of the dharma her fluids received his shark head surfacing
narcisse; her text holder's eyes ̶ rose shadowed, rehearsing ̶ offered
up devotion on knees.
Until one day she glimpsed his shanks sun loss, his buttocks flaccid
pulling out then off away to the rest rooms. "You realize."
For restitution, Saturday nights, she'd tell her "boyfriend" park
outside the "ashram": front load speakers routing sweat borne
ovules OmyGod! up churning ˃ Sunday sinuous duets.
Some aging barrels leach, worn staves, permit no curing; cut
straight from vine stem stripped to tongue smooth pressing.
– W.W.
FROM THAT MOUTH TO THIS,
I kiss you a taste
of yourself you can never otherwise
know but by fingers, yours or mine, between
mouths. Which do you prefer? This tell-tale tongue
with its salacious gossip of your juice,
or slick imps stealing the cream of silence
to take home to the mother of babble?
But why choose? Get to know yourself every
way you can, using love's every impulse.
Only so can your innocence be re-
affirmed, on its travels between realms
of ignorance and experience, both
openings through which the shaman of the heart
utters its oracles of shameless love.
(from "The Gift Of Screws" by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 