The Wait
I’m talking to students about bulls & fists
in Ellison’s Invisible Man. You’re on some interstate
rushing towards me. I imagine you’ve sat
zazeen, your feet tucked underneath you,
your hands—pugilist in another life—resting, open
& upward. You’ll breathe evenly today;
window down, the wind will catch each exhalation
releasing your wife’s body from underneath
your tongue. Soon, your mouth will mirror
my body’s loose gyrations; the day’s meditation
set conveniently aside.
Tonight, I will sit cross-legged
on the hotel bed, my naked fingertips barely
touching, my falling breasts rising with every
om circulating from your diaphragm to your
larynx to vocal chords to palette to your red
lips. The moon will be full tonight, Love. Imagine
your palms on my stomach. We haven’t touched
in years.
I am reminded of the thirty years
of bodies you’ve rested & raved & turmoiled in,
the children you didn’t release, the first body &
the next & the next & so on, you wept into. Your image
ending with you. Your pale, soft hand on my brown
stomach, planted there. I am bleeding & you are speaking
haiku into me. In Gaellic, you say something
about your pasts,
about your body bouncing from one square ring to another,
your flights into various bodies, your heart exposed to camera
lens, to black pen on white paper. Your untethered body drifts
to your six years of solitude with your newly found god
beating sexual desire out of you.
You are a fighter, remember.
Your breath remembers. I don’t recall the power
of prayer when your fingers push into me, but of need,
yours, mine, my lover’s, your wife’s, all tucked into the pillowcase,
waiting for our heads to meet, to fall, to drift into slumber.
BY METTA SÁMA
Metta Sáma is author of Nocturne Trio (YesYes Books 2012) and South of Here (New Issues Press 2005 (published under her legal name)). Her poems, fiction, creative non-fiction, and book reviews have been published or forthcoming in Blackbird, bluestem, The Drunken Boat, Esque, hercricle, Jubilat, Kweli, The Owls, Pebble Lake Review, Pyrta, Reverie, Sententia, and Vinyl, among others. In addition to her creative work, she has published scholarship on Dionne Brand, Terrance Hayes, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison, and is a burgeoning photographer and painter.