amalfi coast, winter ’19

listen to the way the sky moves:

a girl, bent half-spread over lilies

where the moon waxes & wanes,

gives voice to the sea as it

peers with longing

from stage left, reaching

thin fingers of salt into her body.

if the water moves then it is

asking you to come home, holding

an armful of lily-blossoms,

faces white as fear, white as the field

of skin where you find her thighs.

she shows you. she stupefies

even the moonlight as it passes in

& out of disguise: so here is august,

here is her body, & the shape

it makes on the fold-out mattress,

the heat it is against you,

& how soft they are (the sounds

it makes) if you touch her, if you

watch her like the sea does, quietly,

its salt like so much gasoline,

drawing sun into the night.