Interlude
By Denise Leto
Write of water in each of its motions,
of matters worn away by water, to give
her what can't remain in the body
for movement alone.
Matters worn away by water take
her hands past desire
to make movement for you written
in the curve, the catastrophe of hips.
When her hands turn past desire—
turn to her on top of serrated
curves, the strap of hips, and what is happening
now, in front of you, is or isn't why
you turn to her in the place where motion consumes
the sculpted, accidental, forbidden forms
in front of you, and this is or isn't why
we pretend we aren't the thing that doesn't move.
The contorted, ancestral, forbidden form
of the fall being always in contact with air
to pretend we aren't the thing that moves.
Can you recognize: her back is not the same as its touch?
Being always in contact with air,
the memory before this now hurts
so that her touch is not the same as backing away.
Repeating a successive, breaching arc
the memory of afterward stuns nothing
for stillness alone and home shall be
the space of a spasmodic, breaching arc,
the sound of feet on sand in her eyes.
Choking—perhaps tighter—home shall be the space
where the names of things are less clear and coil
between the sound of feet on sand in her eyes,
the way you look at a body and think: not me.
The names of things are less clear, she is not in the names
as though drowning were nearer to us,
to the way you look at a body and think: not me.
The error of blades in the brain gives a pattern
where the sea below her surgery is nearer
to us, to her hands, her lips, her aural torso.
The error of blades is not the array
of her fingers on the strings.
Your hands, your lips, your aural torso
bring a quiet down upon us
with her fingers on the strings that tell you:
the body of your body is not a shark.
Denise Leto, "Interlude" from Your Body is Not a Shark. Copyright © 2013 by Denise Leto. Reprinted by permission of Denise Leto.
Source: Your Body is Not a Shark (North Beach Press, 2013)