Fence!, Phone sex & Passenger
by Kaethe Fine
[ poetry - july 07 ]
Fence!
From the side of the gym
I watch you ready your limbs,
open-stanced and wide,
human parenthesis
clad white and pure.
Something more than two men:
competition’s fire.
Mask keeps in heat, bee keeper,
obscures those burning eyes.
Ready? Fence!
The arm extends, stretching,
long muscles lithe.
You wish for a true opponent.
You want to touch the heart
of the game; to touch the edge
of fear with him,
a place we never go.
You dance forward, back,
but lack the aggression once
stirred by the need to win
or lose everything.
His foil pins your cloth,
your chest bone is impressed.
Swiftly you pull away
arm, legs, breath.
Metal clanks, crossing metal;
sneakered toe to tape line,
obedient, unlike the hungry,
scuffed boots of some swashbuckler,
silver blade flashing
through time, into another century.
He, whose blood spread
across his breast, who died
a noble death for features,
such as mine - a Lady, but unlike me
she was left to mourn the loss of love.
Left longing to be at last
undressed as her salty future
pooled red in that cobbled rut.
My breath quickens,
sucked in by this fiction.
And then, you lunge.
Touch the final point to his rib.
And he's dead.
You remove your mask and gloves,
turn to me, face flushed,
embarrassed by the rubber tip,
wanting for the taste of blood.
Phone sex
Out of the curtain
of disembodied talk I rouse
in myself an expert
interpreter, a connoisseur
of your fingers, an aficionado
of your ass, and pull full-on
your body in the hypothetical,
stopping at nothing.
It is appetite.
It is despair at your
being not here.
I imagine you pulling too.
It makes a music
out of random rhythm.
Shoulder blade against
the bed sheet.
Foot knocking
the wooden beam.
Cracks in my logic allow you
to enter me.
Foreheads touch, sparking
from the static
difference in our minds.
Flattening stomach skin,
mouths locking together,
routing the steam of inside.
I, speechless, almost consume
the edge of the
mouthpiece,
aware of the teeth
that keep me out,
and the spare light
twittering between
dark curtains in
my room, waiting
for a hatch of small birds
to swoop out and thrive,
unsoaked by time
and location.
Passenger
The silent house of wind
surrounds our speeding car
obdurate and old
Music pushes through
this incidental roar
tinny and removed
Bruises shift across
the glowing evening sky
the almost moon
My hand drowns on your
shifting thigh
all the details you
don’t want me to explore
I grumble that the heat
is on full blast
you turn the dial
Your eyes locked fierce
your body just a thing
I wander to
every route or so
I stay here
in cooling air
with last remarks
made many miles ago.
