POEM: MY LIPS, HER PALM

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

my lips, her palm

 

why do men look

at women with an impossible longing

to possess any body found attractive

 

i have watched a woman raise her knee

another’s breast revealed when she bent over

or just the intense magnet of a smile

while casually talking on the phone,

 

nia’s sleeping form as i lean across

to tell her i am going, there is no need for porn

magazines in my life

 

the world is too full of real women and a wife

who tells me it was so romantic how—after

she tripped on the gravel road—i sucked

the dirted blood from the wound on her hand

 

—kalamu ya salaam