how we go on coveting the knife
BY TREVOR KETNER
When you told me about swimming at night
I thought of your naked body
covered carefully or not covered in moonwater,
how little I know about your body.
The dark flowers, ripples parting
from white shoulders, parentheses around you
diving down and deeper down
to the dark in dark. It was three AM. I’d slept.
And turning, I still missed you
in the way we miss the disembodied.
I don’t understand how I ought to love you,
so we talked silverware, arched
arrangement, position—as if the body
were only an old spoon. A ladle.
Silver heirloom bestowed
but bloody. To hunt – to cut the stag
open, to wear the color hidden there like rouge.
