Orpheus, Asymptote
       

I've tasted bones from the butcher's

house and once a sun-bleached fragment

of skull. The longer I live the closer I get.

At rush hour turnstiles click like a summer

mob of beetles — their shining mouths.

Trains deafen as they speed, departure

trailing like a loosened bow.

Inside the car it's quiet, silent

inside speed and delicious

to be with something that just holds me.

By the lane birches are notched with public initials:

it seems like proof but isn't.

Nights, my bare thigh bumps a table and pain

spreads like slow ink. I move

through the exercises of lust,

a sour drill: look at tight buds

of lavender, the ring finger

of strangers: look at people getting into

their homes, light from the hallway falling

flat on their faces — it's never enough. I turn

and walk straight into the blaxing X of the sun

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Copyright © 2018 Amy Meng All rights reserved
from Bridled
Pleiades Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission