Bill Wolak

The first time you pulled me
into your steaming shower
with only the hot water streaming,
I thought our bodies would be scalded.

But with your flesh pressed against mine,
the pain dissolved as my hands explored
your skin that was pale as fog
rising just to the cliff edge.

Holding your slippery body,
my mouth found yours
under the steaming spray,
and your kiss soothed the heat
out of my skin like flames licked by rain.

Now when I need to remember you,
I stand in the shower under the hottest setting,
and in the gushing, burning surge,
I can feel you once again
pressed against me like roots
suddenly tightening in a tree
split by lightning.

Place a tulip bulb under your pillow
and sleep on it till you dream of lovemaking.
Then plant it in five handfuls of soil
gathered from beneath your lover’s footprints.
Collect raindrops that have dripped
from the branches of a cherry tree.
Pour that rainwater over the bulb through a ring
that you wear or have worn in the past saying,
“I ask water to touch his lips with my thirst,
I ask fire to weave the light in his dreams with my shadow,
I ask earth to grind his nakedness against mine like an avalanche,
I ask air to tempt him with the whispered kiss of my perfume.”
When the tulip blossoms, crush the flower
against your breasts and nape and wrists and hips.
He will find you waiting at midnight
mistaking your body for his bedspread,
your hair for his mirror,
your hands for his cup,
and your smile for his moonlight.

Aroused during lovemaking,
Trobriand Islanders snap their teeth
and nip at their lover’s nose and chin.
As their passion mounts,
they bite cheeks and lips
wildly until they bleed.
Then at the moment of orgasm,
they chew off each others eyelashes.

Colorless as rain,
a zipper either grins
like a crowbar in a cash box
or sneers like a blackboard
waiting for equations sleeping in chalk.

Sometimes zippers open with the squeal
of an ambulance siren, other times
with the slow cracking of paint
chipping from a canvas.

The triumph of surprise
no one can ever anticipate
comes cramped beneath a zipper.