Empty Lap

Rivers

have carved

down the roundness

of her face. Modern

woman. Contemporary man, no,

she finds that he is anything but.

Her hand in his

pocket,

“You’ll find only tears”.

She smiles and politely disagrees, whispers that

she loves him, casts her

television shadows against the bedroom door.

She has wrenched something up,

up, up from beneath the flesh, meat

of this bloated place,

has hooked his eye,

has shaped from the wind of her breast a quiet and terrifying promise.

Bare legs

ceiling fan

his empty lap.

This nameless density cloaks her

and the engine of her life sputters, stalls, roars, bursts

into raw spurts

of calm lucidity.