Page 37 - the NOISE February 2014

WHeRe THe WiNe RUNS
Between the taste of your hunger
and the yellow weeds
where my childhood runs in stampede. Where calluses form,
petals take each other to bed,
and thighs moan rivers when you pull.
If I knew, love
what makes the maple red
I would tell you,
I would let you rule the world with it just so I could watch, so I
could be the high heels on your arm.
Between your head in my lap
and your cigarette on the corner
looking right through me,
between a tundra we gasp together,
and a desert peppering the wild between our lips
But for now we’re just two interruptions in the shade with bubble glasses, seasoned grapes
and dreams to spill into the cracking earth.
Can you hear it
kicking the wind between your bones?
The block, the kink, the zipper that separates us all but a rock smoothed over.
Drink, drink drunk with me
and it’s all but a rock smoothed over.
We can step aside when knives stampede drink when the rest
fall trampled.
I know
I know, love
what you always meant to tell me.
PiNoT NoiR
You make me hot breakfast in the morning
call the next day, twice
send a bouquet of roses
take me out to dinner, not just at the local diner to a five starer in the big city
over salmon ravioli and walnut salad you say just the right thing and I fall for you completely.
Lush slow lover in velvet suit
kissing me slowly, igniting a match
across the buds of my tough,
slow saffron flame
feeding on my thirst, holding me long into the night, hugging the valley of my waist, brushing my shoulder with your thumb.
Years open and close in my mouth.
In the grave your taste
is still kissing me, it never stopped it continues to break open,
a slow purple sunrise
as my world goes dark.
| Leah Waller has an MFA in poetry and non-fiction from NAU, and has works published in numerous books and periodicals. She currently teaches writing and is working on a series of wine & coffee poems. leahwal@gmail.com
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• FEBRUARY 2014 • 37