Liz Chang

Weathering

for two voices during a natural disaster

When he arrives, he will see me

as I intend. Olympian.

            Already the heat drains from the crater

sprawled on the bed,

coy in my garters

that had cradled the mountain of his shoulders,

and lace, as he loves me.

the slope of his masculine hips.

I pull the sheets

closer,

in around me, hoping,

Where do mistresses come from?

cocooned, my gaze floats

to the window,

 I am Mexican chocolate.

picture Dan as he fords back

through the city

I am red. I am cayenne.

to his other life.

Taste me, Daniel, you will burn.

And you eat

The whole city seems awake

every bite

and still, as I was,

when he slipped out the door.

a taste for me on your swollen lips.

This is a familiar moment.

I crack the chain,

the housewife from across the hall surfaces

Sirens cut through my isolation

in front of me, pale as a fish.

Opening and closing her thin mouth,

singing my sadness.

she tries to dislodge words.

But the room is full of heaviness

and something is wrong.

Remembering the sweetness

that once seduced you

and now         (I never let him see me

stir, send him away with the

postcard-image:

I feel possessed with wanting

to tell her

me, languid and still

I cry at how you love me.

luxuriant in the love we’d made.)

I am ashamed, thinking

the neighbors will hear

my loneliness.

            You’re scalded and never sated.

I want them only to cringe

at how bodily he loves me.

I read her curlers and desperation:

They look at me through the lens

it is barely light,

of the side-view mirror, distorted,

knowing my life teeters on the edge

with the white loneliness of a new day to face,

the fires are coming —something

they will never understand,

but desire.

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Psychic Meatloaf Poetry Journal