To Make Him Real Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Alma can never leave her family- and this is how she wakes up
In her little room,
Not knowing how to swim: her bellybutton filled with distemper
And the saltwater tears of all of her unfortunate unicorns-
And she wants a new bosom for Christmas;
As I remember way back when, four or five months ago
And the virgin white panties she wore the first time we made love:
And how she fixed her self up for me,
Like a child of brown coffees, and laughing in the caesuras of our
Juvenile and open graves:
And it has been fun, the promises I have broken each successful time
We have made love,
The feral excitements I have gathered from her throats, the hickies
Like boy scout badges she has given my collar bones and limbs-
And the nights I’ve been tried spending myself alone,
Wanting to look her up:
And how we have lived together across so many streets: how I bought
Her a bicycle and had to return it, because she found out she would never
Have the time:
And the time we went to the beach, and I held her up in the waves and
Kiss her mouth and laughed because she couldn’t swim but fitted against
Me like two pieces of furniture that were a set,
With the tourists looking on: or how very early on in our love making,
My parents lost the fruit market
While we were at the zoo: Alma, that was only the second time we made love- Now look what I have done to you,
Though your children are your life and it is still two months before
Christmas- you are my life, and I cherish you- your soul is the symmetrical
Trail that I follow from morning until noon:
I would wish to commit suicide without the familiar lights of your laughing
Cathedral, and my art is brandished by your soft and shaven fleshes;
As you come over to my house like the spendthrift light through the stained
Glass in a church’s transom:
Through you, I have become familiar with the Virginsita of Guadalupe,
And I kiss and bless her, and follow you home through the many wishes
Of my thoughts,
Like a wooden boy distended from so many lives, hoping to burry his final
Truth in your fibrillating architectures to make him real.