© Sauce*Box, Fall 1996.
All rights revert to author.
The egg's red pool: an essay on love
by Padma Jared Thornlyre
cover us with your pools of fir -- H.D.
Branches shed their
needles and cones,
hetaeric wine
trickles from marble
hands, meteors
sizzle, the colossus
Roars
and on Her knees
It's the wind on the ground, not I, who lifts your skirt to the hips, the wind who has fingers-mine are numb-and it is Lorca, not I, who unbuttons your blouse.
To drink your coral vintage, I extend and forfeit my tongue! I would be this plummeting valley that hears only you and the rampant creek's orgy. Your lap the bed where the unicorn curls, you sink into my beard. Mine the proud and brimming groin!-mine the breath igniting your flesh! Ultimate as rain, you permeate-
Beneath absolute black silhouettes of star-bearing
branches of silver maple, my body churns in yours. Your blood is on the
wind. You, who name yourself Agony, whose breasts are
dark upon dark
form from Man's
dark clay
your forests,
fling roots
to writhe restless
in black soil,
lip forth
whole wildernesses!
where the aching stars tremble to fall into your lap, tremulous as I.
like frost over crimson forests or froth of sea-wave over seed-core or sea-foam's froth over pine-cone, the sea-mare, Mare, Our Lady of Foam bends sea-mane to flesh to salt-tongue the crimson gold of pine-grove, foam-sheen over branches; the courtesan's crescent a cauldron caressing scent of pine-breath; stroke on firs their masculine beards!-inhale their fungus perfumes! A last breath. Now, it is you whom I am become sea-foam, sea-form, seed-foam, sea-maiden, sea-mare, Mare, Ave Mare. Pine-branch curls over pine-cone fallen salt-soaked, fragile, gold curl crisp over gold-flush. The black carcass of a jagged pine-trunk.
So ugly it is said
I possess Beauty,
I awaken to your
gaze from the nearby
log. You silk your hair with abalone-comb. Behind you the creek's foam gathers
dawn's plums and apricots, while behind me mists of mossbeard steam into
musk. Your rowan-berry lips ascend my stirring.
Perhaps I should
read Kerouac,
but I'd rather stay
with you. I would
seduce you
with cappuccino.
I have spoken,
and I live,
and I have knelt
to kiss your loins.
* * * * *
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