21st & Amtrak

At 3:27

laughter

Barrels from the cave of his throat

Three times before I can finish my sentence

This is the way strangers should always make love

Teeth glistening in heat

Mouths parted

Eyes quick

Hands moving rapidly

As if the air was flesh

We hold our own bodies,

To house the riots of our chests

His eyes tell me what his mouth will not

They’ve betrayed him six times today

Your lips embrace words like an old friend

My poetry

Consumed in the lines of your smile

You laugh,

Absorbed in the enamel of my speech

Four hours fly like a loved one’s last breath

I fold images of him into my luggage, for safe keeping

You are all of Sampson, the morning after Delilah sheared his crown

    Reminiscent of might and defiance/

    Trembling in his vulnerability

Friend, Come tease a smile from a woman’s wet and lustful trust

Coax the sorrow from the spine of strangers, Stranger

There was weight there, just this morning

evaporated in the early evening that met us

You lark like flight. We laugh like light.

When the earth exhales all dewy and sultry like

And the pavement leaps out to melt our backs

When the tension warms like stale Budweiser and curry

When intimacy becomes some lofty bird who sheds her feathers

In the quiet jungle of an African convenience store

And us foreigners, we laugh and clap each other’s backs

Marvel at the way Americans carry their tongues like heavy baggage

“you speak like a weary traveler”

She says

“and don’t know no better, and don’t want to learn, either”

It makes me laugh

That you spend the rest of our time together

Pressing your tongue and vowel sounds

To the roof of your mouth,

Hoping to change your heritage

When the heavens drop their scars and steam

When the waiting room feels like a living room floor

When the clock strikes 4:48 and we must become strangers once more

I am reminded of the all the august evenings

When my smile felt like an American tongue/

Before I learned lazy speech sounds much better than silence,

I tuck away my concrete teeth

And grin all the more fiercely.