poem: Satin Sheets and Tiger ClawsA Chapter by Marie Anzalone"in our roughness we are tender, and this becomes our religion""and everything depends upon/ how near you sleep to me... oh take this longing from my tongue/ all the lonely things my hands have done"- L. Cohen
and tonight, I drew you in shadows because the streets narrowed as the sun went down behind my back and I thought I saw something flicker in an empty lot where children play their own version of soccer avoiding glass shards and dialogue.
we could make it if only reality were not always getting in the damned way of things.
but such is the way of shadows and children, and empty lots in hearts everywhere we sometimes play at children's games knowing much more than dialogue was forever at stake, and feigning toughness as only children finding their way in barrios devoid of affection could ever invent.
In our roughness we are tender- and this becomes our religion; Philosophy and morality tied into one breath one sigh, a pushing in, a pulling out moments stolen recklessly of lives lived in limitations of streets while dreaming of long walks on beaches and candlelit dinners and time for a gaze to coalesce in spaces tended by the the caress of gentle winds, soft rains.
knowing that all we could get is the tempest- she would be here, she would be memorable, she would be achingly sweet and deadly and divinely breathtaking and everything passionate two souls will ever, could ever... ask; equal parts satin sheets and tiger claws; roses and predatory stalking through the streets where shadows play at sundown.
and she is ours if we want her.
sweet lilies nod in time and we think in cycles, in seasons, in dust in the songs of warblers and the coming of rains; shoe merchants hawk their wares and we walk on and fruit vendors divine our fortunes in seed patterns and this is the way of us. We can and do only speak of today, this street that striped ball in a forgotten field green grass strewn with broken glass... like them, we punt that ball carefully around the cow grazing in the middle of all things.
if I had any courage left to ask it would be this... give me just one chance to set aside barrio cynicism, trapped sparrows ashes and begging. Give me one night, breath to breath, heart to heart let me feel your soul cry from its trapped space into my open mouth, let me imagine just once that I am normal, that I could be yours, only- that I could be free in a house; could never imagine waking up another single lonely damned dawn on earth. Let me retract my claws, embrace you into the space between my breasts, scented like lilies.
When the rains come, we can pretend they are the gentle kind that nurtures the span of lives spent remembering how children can be so tough and so very unafraid when the sun goes down after their game.
© 2013 Marie AnzaloneFeatured Review
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Added on January 28, 2013Last Updated on April 1, 2013 AuthorMarie AnzaloneXecaracoj, Quetzaltenango, GuatemalaAboutBilingual (English and Spanish) poet, essayist, novelist, grant writer, editor, and technical writer working in Central America. "A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to ta.. more..Writing
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