Jeffrey Gibson

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Whose Bodies

Whose bodies my old hands once touched,
how much and why,
I can no longer sharply bring to mind,
nor all the lovely heads that rested lazing on my chest.
Too long ago, it's true, that they were pillowed there
for this.
And yet, these girls forgotten? No, oh no!
At least some shadow of the taste of them,
how slim their waists,
how sly and dark their eyes,
and how their mouths were belled around desire
persists,
and ah! this memory:
how colour sang within their hair
(their raven, russet, saffron hair)
then spread in sultry wingings on my skin.

And sin? A thing unknown.

I know I was aware, back then, aware of light,
a pulsing light,
that, even when we kissed past midnight's toll
still saturated everything inside my rooms,
and fired their curving backs, their reaching arms, their thighs
to willing heat, to glowing coals.

But now they all are ghosts,
these girls,
who once, yes, turned to me within the dark to quiver and to cry
and be made safe within my arms.
And I am ill-content to conjure images of long ago.
It's February now. I'm cold. My heart is dry.
And memory brings into my bed
a thin defense against my shiverings.

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