even women have flirted too much with the ideas of womanhood
like body-parts, like weight plummeting in
like desire lost between the loins of a fire, between the folding of laundry
but I promised this is a poem for men
not body-parts, not songs, not softness
the first time I wrote about a man, not to a man
I had the image of half a brother, half a father kneading dough in the kitchen
on an old house I am much too familiar with
these days. It was the baking smell that woke up the words
I had wondered at how strength can be embodied
above a shoulder, behind an arm that lifts
a twelve year old ballerina without a pas de deux
to have, to hold- now or later
an arm to beat the sugar in a bowl and another to sift through
experience and a long day of sweat and blood
not alien by different bodies, by faithless names
by grander gestures of interest, or cynical defeat
this is an exclamation of being lulled to sleep
being triggered by the wave of a track of music
and yes, this is about bodies, skin upon skin
eyes and ears, mouths and smiles
this is a poem for the men who lifted me
the men who loved me, the men who slept in me
the men who left prints on my skin
and the man who seduces me to sleep, on hope.
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