Our Elements, Poem by Alison Rosalie

oh,
your thighs
a raging, reckless
river.

pale, swift and strong in
highlights stroked by nightlight
swooning and stressing under me; :
a lone fisherwoman atop a plank
i rock
and pivot
with my rod stuck straight –
dipping my line delicately down
into the evertwist of tides
(where it pierces the pearly surface
like a pushpin into skin)
wherein silver glints
of fish flitter
and feast on
flies.

and a moan bursts
your twilight lips
when i clutch captive
your caught-nibbling fish
wriggling slippery in my grip.
and they spasm and twist
while your breath,
a midnight breeze
moves murky clouds across the moon
and sends me, shivering,
drifting afar, afloat
a wooden fracture of a building’s bones
floating as my broken boat,
while i drift so far, far afloat
in my beaten wreck of a barely-boat
under paling cheekpopping moonshine

oh
so distant on
those waning legs:
shiveringquivering in
their slidingsailing
glintfish asphyxiating way.