a living
BY ALEX DIMITROV
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I watched you row us back, into the distance of human familiars.
And the bees gathered as if to become more than one sound.
In the city, when late, I want even the well-behaved strangers
at boring parties. They exhaust me.
All small talk and posture; (come here and exhaust me)
and what is the mind?
Even you. The leaves. In their temporary dying,
give a rich background to people taking each other to bed.
Why would I give up the physical world?
Today, it is all I believe.
And whatever addictions it sells me
(the first open mouth on my own teenage mouth)—
I am shy but impressed.
I am living and badly. The oars hit the dock,
the plates cling to their places,
look at all that has come here and gladly
to rot. A handful of flowers and vinegar.
Leather and silk. Cancer and love.
I don’t even need to be promised fidelity now.
Someone’s lowered his hands to a place without speech.
The pelting on the window is rain.
My tongue, I have found, is warmer
than any sentence I’ve wanted to feel.
And what I have wanted, I should try to forget.
So I stay;
don’t you think so—where else would we go,
what is open this late? I have waited all day just to see you.
In the darkest part of the water.
I see you in the darkest part of the water and swim.
