An Evening at The Crown
BY SARAH FLETCHER
The tongue, which is
the stethoscope of love,
is searching for a pulse
among the bottles.
It’s nestled in the mouth
of the young boy who
served me rum. Drunkenness
is everywhere. The trees
have let their branches
out like limbs, the whores.
They stumble in the wind.
My kiss has slipped off
like a dress. It keeps
on unpeeling itself, a gift.
I tell the boy his body
is a language and I want
to learn it. An addict
for his dialect, I mourn it
when it slithers back
into the bar to fill its gut
with more black beer.
My tongue back in my mouth
like some small bird,
love running from me
like a feral deer.