sublingual

your servant comes in bells

We hang
our laundered slips—
                 on the line.

Let them squint.
Let them bless it.
Let them mistake

         hunger

for metaphor—

the karass
         of two bodies
                 pretending
                          to be literature.

God can watch.
He loves
a woman confessing

         as long as it’s on
                 nice paper.

I’ll give them a poem
with clean hands:

         a woman reading,
         a woman in the margins—

                 Sappho folded
                 in my pocket.

But you will know
what the poem is really doing:

         opening its mouth
         and keeping your name inside

                 like a pill
                 I can’t dissolve.

Between the lines,
         two Eves
                 sharing one apple—

in a room
         that never makes the news.




photograph: swen brandy