My fingers long to smooth supple skin:
Warm putty stretched over stone,
The beautiful lines across
A man’s forehead
When he is reading poetry.
Inside the brain pan, letters gallop and leap
Over bridgeless synapses and ideas burn
With meaning.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . I thought men,
Like different fonts, were mostly alike,
That their differences were all on the surface,
But I couldn’t speak the language, thought them
All predators or the occasional mangy coyote
With his keening note at night to unnerve.
I loved only dead men’s words:
Dear Heart, how like you this?
I settled for berries when thirsting
For the deep juice of melon,
Have known the congress of sparrows
While longing for the jaw of the wolf.
So fearful, not of darkness, but of light,
When all else cast a shadow where I stood,
This one waited patiently, listening for my breath,
And when it quickened caught me unaware.
Our poetry, he says, as I smooth his forehead.
The she wolf rolls over, exposes her throat,
Fearless with the alpha male, submission
To his fangs her chosen thrill. And finally
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am fluent.
Cherri Randall received her MFA in 2004 and her PhD in 2008 from the University of Arkansas. She is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Her work has appeared in journals such as Sojourn, Colere, Paddlefish, The Potomac Review, Permafrost Review, Bewildering Stories, Main Channel Voices, Paper Street Press, and others.
