national poetry month || muscle-junction
TRANSCRIPT
University of Northern Iowa
Muscle-JunctionAuthor(s): Brian TurnerSource: The North American Review, Vol. 289, No. 2, National Poetry Month (Mar. - Apr.,2004), p. 29Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25127140 .
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N A R
JEANNE EMM0NS
The Unwinding
The blue kimono is the color of repose. Put it on when the hose
have been peeled away from legs still swollen with sitting, and the buttoned jackets of the day have come off shoulders hunched
from bending over books, and the brassiere is unhooked
and the breasts hanging free.
The kimono is loose and easy, covered with pink tea roses
and morning glories, shot with gold.
Put it on and a thousand geishas unwind obis of stiff brocade, remove their makeup, white as rice,
take down their hair and, all undone, recline upon cushions, sighing,
curling the toes of their bare feet
and wrapping their cool hands
around cups of steaming tea.
BRIAN TURNER
Muscle-Junction
If we were to start with an orgasm
and work our way backward in time,
deliberately stripping ourselves of each kiss, each touch, as if unraveling a narrative
made of flesh and heat, silk-brushing tongues lifted from the spine's furrowing groove, slick,
the drums of our fingers taken back now
one by one, unlocking our bodies in a smooth
glissando, a fall of breath, a fall of pulse, the words feeling and emotion meaningless here,
where every cell of the body is filled with light, we might return again to the very first touch,
that electric space between us, that blue charged
crackling, that wealth of delicious pain,
the impossible divide between flesh and light.
W. T. PFEFFERLE
Map Reading
In a beaten-down road atlas we mark places to go,
not vacation spots, but new homes,
homes away from this one.
My wife uses red pen and I use blue.
She makes neat circles around town names,
and I make wiggly lines around entire states.
These decisions are not entirely our own.
There is a sick father somewhere, and
there are hard feelings and money owed.
During the day my wife works. And I, too frail from these thoughts in my head,
pop aspirin and stare at the map.
At night we lie on the bed and let
the evening warmth pour in here.
When I dream, I dream of us on that map.
I take giant steps, a hundred miles long, a foot in Colorado and one in Utah.
At the California border my wife zigs when I zag.
March-April 2004 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 29
This content downloaded from 91.229.229.162 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 04:59:16 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions