Whispering With You in the Early Hours
Where shall we go, now I’ve settled down
and the world is gay enough.
Will they say,—no, come back, I’m not done—
I had the power, once, to make anything I touch
sexual in nature—and this was my One. True. Gift?
Take the bowl of ripe figs
I brought, for example: not figs
at all. And the bowl—? Nothing more
than the collective dreams of others
doing it far from where we are tonight.
As you can imagine, at parties, I’ve been a hit--
Who are you, they ask. And, What are you
doing in our home?
“Who are you”… impossible
to answer with words alone.
Naturally, we turn
to description--He was an old white faggot, officer;
or we fall into narrative modes--He must have climbed
in through the bedroom window;
the curtains, fluttering like ghosts! Of course
I am all those things, but not only those things.
Who I am escapes me, though I’ve settled down.
Who you are is—likewise—beyond reach.
Now is the only moment
we’ll get to sit together, lost in thought.
And tomorrow? Tomorrow never fails.
Here, I want you
to have the bowl, it’s yours—do with it as you please.
If you’d like, gather some figs for yourself
and for the others you’ll meet at parties.
Make the fruit, the bowl—the things of the world
you touch and hold and give—mean
whatever they’ll mean, with words
sexual or not. They are our kind’s hopeless offspring.
and the world is gay enough.
Will they say,—no, come back, I’m not done—
I had the power, once, to make anything I touch
sexual in nature—and this was my One. True. Gift?
Take the bowl of ripe figs
I brought, for example: not figs
at all. And the bowl—? Nothing more
than the collective dreams of others
doing it far from where we are tonight.
As you can imagine, at parties, I’ve been a hit--
Who are you, they ask. And, What are you
doing in our home?
“Who are you”… impossible
to answer with words alone.
Naturally, we turn
to description--He was an old white faggot, officer;
or we fall into narrative modes--He must have climbed
in through the bedroom window;
the curtains, fluttering like ghosts! Of course
I am all those things, but not only those things.
Who I am escapes me, though I’ve settled down.
Who you are is—likewise—beyond reach.
Now is the only moment
we’ll get to sit together, lost in thought.
And tomorrow? Tomorrow never fails.
Here, I want you
to have the bowl, it’s yours—do with it as you please.
If you’d like, gather some figs for yourself
and for the others you’ll meet at parties.
Make the fruit, the bowl—the things of the world
you touch and hold and give—mean
whatever they’ll mean, with words
sexual or not. They are our kind’s hopeless offspring.
Frederick Speers is the author of So Far Afield (Nomadic Press), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His forthcoming chapbook, In the Year of Our Making and Unmaking, was selected by Carl Phillips for the Frontier Poetry Digital Chapbook Contest. www.frederickspeers.com