TRAPPED
by
Cathryn Cofell
You
talk too much, your voice consumes the night.
It’s
not your metaphors I want to have extended,
it’s
your long legs on, over, around me like atoms,
it’s
your work-stained hands igniting my atoms,
writing
and re-writing the lines of my extended
body,
not this language of the haunted and the night.
Your
mouth has more important things to stir:
tongue
me a haiku, tend me like a spring tree,
kiss
me here and here to quiver, to burst.
Feel
it? I am a magnolia bud about to burst,
I
am the ripe musk of a magnolia tree:
dig
at my roots and all my branches will stir.
Enough
with the words. Enough with the half names.
Don’t
you know how wrong it is to call out other
loves
in the dark naked clasp of my arms? This, yes,
is
what brought us here—the patter, the meter, yes,
the
recoil, but set them free outside now, another
prey
wants ambush, begs you to pray my name.
~
first published in The Wisconsin Academy
Review
