Jessica Poli
HAPTIC CENTO
I wanted you to touch me
almost endlessly.
I dreamed as I waited
in the early dark
while my very bones sweated
hunger. Dreamt of snakes
beneath the forest.
My legs open. The air full of water.
If we are made in God’s image,
I was as good as I would ever be. In the dark, the ruddy
glow through my breastbone:
some part of me that, almost,
is closer to me than I am to myself.
With lines from Rae Armantrout, Michael Burkard, Leila Chatti, Donika Kelly, Alicia Ostriker, Carl Phillips, Jean Valentine, and William Carlos Williams