Leonore Wilson
AMOROSO
Behind the painter’s double doors, I can hear the casual
and not so casual touching as the many tiny pleats
of her skirt spread around her like a certain emptiness
expanding, her nipples covered with teeth-marks,
the colored imprints on her thighs that confirm her,
purple-black as berries, as red currants, as the blood
colored snake in the cloistered garden near the white
chapel, where the sick-sweet dove moans in confusion
or envy, I cannot tell which. O but I want to enter
her body with him as he takes her from behind,
how I weaken in a room smelling of candles and turpentine,
oils and salt so much so that I want to be her hip,
waist and belly, the bluish veins beneath her tongue,
the taste of lipstick on her teeth, I would drink
her milk directly, refold the note in her pocket which says
love me, I would be the bloody handkerchief
in his hand, the red smear itself; yes I wish these walls
were transparent to see into them, how her history
intensifies when he is inside her, under the plaid blanket,
their bones thin as teak, their animal divinity
like Bach’s early fugues, their heat the archeology
of memory unearthing documents, these lovers
who live before me and live after me so that they come
out of me and I am mirrored in them.
Location: Napa, California Email: Poet707@aol.com Other: Leonore teaches creative writing at Napa Valley College.
