Tuesday, March 5
AUBADE After a poem of the same name by Cameron Awkward-Rich My dog doesn't wake me. He sleeps at my knees in the sheets. And when I pull his yawning body close, he licks my face, like anyone's kiss. I once praised my sixth-grade students: "Kiss your brains! For each answer, kiss your thumb, then, touch it, quick, to your forehead, like this!" Now, I never give my brain a kiss. Instead, each night I swallow a tablet to keep the wires in my head apart, and prevent a mind-fire, though the pill leaves me curled like an ammonite, with a stony skin. My dog sleeps between me and my lover so we don't touch each other. Still there is no part of my brain left untouched: like a wind sock shaped like a fish in the wind, it swims in air: inside and out: it is always being entered: as if a fish belonged in the sky: as if a mind could stay aloft, dancing in this breezy element. My body, inside and out, was once a place lovers met. Now, though I turn from my lover, I hold my dog tight. He is a retriever. Each day he welcomes me to earth as I drop like a fish from the sky. Me blinking in sheets--- Where am I? And for what? My dog fetches my body to me in his mouth, and I reach out both hands to touch myself. (Liza Flum)