In Bringing Poetry Month to a Close

I have to showcase Staceyann Chin. She is perhaps my favorite poet. She's raw, funny, sexy and hauntingly honest. I am trying to be as courageous in my writing.

Here is my latest favorite:

What is sex, Exactly?

Three fingers and a barrier

no fluids/fluids

what about breath/what if she just panted a little
on your panties

what if you kept your top on/in the shower
in the hours before dawn

one finger/no barrier
silk/or lace

her face on your nipple/palm on chest
with bra/without a skirt

one hand under her shirt
no penetration/but you came

what if you got permission
would that mean you cheated

what if the it wasn't that heated
or that good

what if the hood of your jacket
stayed on the whole time
what if you thought of your lover/said her name
a hundred times/under your breath

out loud

should you be proud that you held her
present in every moment

what if there is no dick
no licking of parts deigned genital

what if you only kissed her face
but she opened like a parachute/and bled all over your hands

what if you did it standing in the hallway
of a church
what if you said ten Hail Mary's after it was done

what if it wasn't that much fun
what if you wanted to take it back when you were done

what if there were no lips/no slipping of anything
inside of anybody

only a humping
just an impassioned bumping of groin
against groin

moan or no moan
on a bed of foam/at home

outside/at a bar
far enough in to say that something happened

what exactly
you cannot say

tongues
open surfaces/non-private

heated glances across the room
cliches/really
possibilities of what could happen in another life

another lifetime
what if we had a parallel reality

another one of me/you
to be circumspect/to not consider what could be not-sex
with you

with her/with the parallel versions of us

could ignore these consequences
not have to
reference these parameters

why can't can I just jump
measure the cost/later

much later

in this lifetime
after the flushes/and the hush/hush/love

not so loud
mind the neighbors/the dogs
wooden floors is not made for this kind of activity

I have to be careful

though I want to press you
to the walls of the shower

make no note these hours passing so quickly
with your fingers buried
in my hair/my heart/my art

I want to reduce the neighbors
to whispers

so they would know
that what we are doing
is something akin to fucking/to rutting

to making the kind of love
they only dream of

I wish women would be honest enough to say

the basic fingering of foolishness
we endure from some loves
is not enough to make us come
alive

what exactly is

sex is exactly the intent with which a body moves
if she comes

you can say you fucked her
even without hands

if you wiggled a pinkie/a thumb
if you made her cunt numb without taking off a stitch of clothes

witch or craft
if you stroked the shaft of her rising

be with word or deed

if she needs you before bedtime
when she awakens
if she calls/if you crawl the floors in her absence

if she references the map of your skin
if you pin her to a wall

if she falls when you push your leg
between hers

if she bleeds for you
if you cut the wrists of your yearning with her profile

if your insides turn when you think of her
kissing her lover

you are already fucked
the parts of you still tucked away from wanting her
are doomed to emerge eventually

they will be marked by her ardor
striped by the way your eyes reach for her

in a crowded room
no hands
you have already committed the sin

tin-man or straw heart
the brick road ahead will be hard to follow

it will be impossible to turn back/it will be
painful to acknowledge

the details of such a thing will haunt you
how far
was too far/at what point was enough/enough to say

we crossed a line
having smudged the chalky lines with our bodies
arching/ardent on these floors

the more I think of it/the more
I am inclined to press the details in palms that will hold them

without judgment/my friends far away
have no opinion on the matter

are you happy, bitch

then I really don't give a fuck
if you fucked her or/if you fingered Mary Magdalene

if she makes you laugh/if she makes you food/if
she makes you scream the right notes

when you are nestled
if she makes you purr/pen in hand
if she informs that pool of ink you call your god

then she is good for you
like the Ocean/after a good cry

like the wind
when you have just about had it with the heat of Summer

if she can hold you when you holding back those waters that threaten
to drown you at night
if she feels right

the details of some afternoon
fading futile into hindsight
are irrelevant

what glints iridescent is the glow of you
giggling
you wiggling a self we worried was gone from the fierce warrior in you

all weapon and wielding
we need you whole

and we ain't mad at you getting a little nookie
now and then a girl needs to get her nuggets shined

all the ducks don't have to be lined up
they say

nipple or hands or shirts peeled off
barrier or no barrier
fingers or feet

it's good to see you coming
back to yourself

fluid and flowing
breath and beginnings

we give you permission to laugh out loud

forget the neighbors
the dogs
the questions of forever can no longer inform your yesterday

act first
in accordance with the now

today is the fulcrum upon which all future pleasures turn
burn the belly of the broken

look to what remains whole
hold it to you

honestly

trust that the less than noble notions of lace
illicit lips
and the lumbering of the last minute regrets
will leave you eventually

to lock themselves
away from the light of this lithic luminescence

stretching itself
limitness across the length of my hair

my heart
my art is lucky to have you
hopeful

so let me hold you
whole

remain with me here
till the task of time requires the aging parts of us to be
elsewhere