Ramesh Dohan
Pillow TalkOur ménage à trois by candlelight
The various absurdities: black lace I move my body smell next to yours Your spice of Zanzibar. Mine rains, yours pours Your pleasure and sighs What if I made you hear this as music? I am winding down Only the night is wound up tight Winter WaltzWho's in charge of the nip and tuck
of a winter sky, the long solstice, the constellation of birds— grackles, perhaps, ribboning their way across the low pink horizon, the smoky grey of December skies, a path to somewhere not here? The ribbon curls in on itself. The flock, if something so large goes by that name, millions of black wings erupting from the North, flows like the air has become a river, the birds banking and shifting with the currents. While You SleepAt night, while you sleep, they rise up
while we wander lost in the natural symbols of our dreams. These simple household goods mimic speech and intertwine into their own design. Listen. Every sound clicks into place, a tone like bells, like machines make. Refrigerator, dishwasher, clock. All these manufactured servants are singing to themselves, to soothe us into sleep.
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SummerThe morning swung open like an iron gate
We walked down the path to breakfast A cool wind blows this very moment Stirring the steadfast willow leaves The wheat bend, the leaves of the peach tress In a chorus line The invitation was for you Rest with me under the linden tree As the sky returned to baby blue, the swifts do not sing what they do well A PortraitWhat scene would I want to be framed in
more than this one, an ordinary night at the kitchen table, floral wallpaper pressing in, white cabinets full of glass, the telephone silent, a pen tilted back in my hand? It gives me time to ponder about all that goes on outside my window. At the MoviesAt the ticket window, I won’t follow
the body of the usher as she leans to break a twenty with a press of cash register and chest. She’ll tear my ticket and pass twelve-fifty beneath the glass, steering me past the snack bar where two rows of candies in loud yellow boxes will glow like lines on a highway and lead me to my seat. The previews will warn R for restricted, S for sex and V for violence, and I’ll remember the V-neck of the usher’s sweater and the fainter V drawn by her breasts. Attention ReaderBaudelaire considers you his brother
and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if ....to make sure you have not closed the book, and now I am summoning you up again, attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing in the doorway of these words. |
