Just as one has spoken numbers,
I shall do, but taste the ways:
The sour grit of medicine
I took on my sick tongue. The silt
of nighttime on my palms, of copper
on my underlips. The sweat of wolves
as you played with the full span
of shoulders, of outstretched arms and fingers.
That lover’s bay that you had never
loosed on any prey.
The honey of the light that flowed out on
the folds of you €”un-tucked, untied, unshod €”
when I wished to taste the shadow of your
throat and thigh. A prelude, when I knelt gripped
in your thunder, and tendons strained
and life welled up, bought freely with
my pain and yours.
The meal of our healed bones €”
we snapped each other up. We drank, prized
by tongues that knew to savor what we found
in marrows of each other. That vision of bamboo,
when shadows switched your form. There we were
in Ahman, the pucker of bitterest almonds on our lips.
You tasted me. You wore the tinge of ash,
the musk of fire. O, my throat aches
hollow with desire.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sarah Dunster is an award-winning poet and fiction writer. Her poems have been published in Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought, Segullah Magazine, and Victorian Violet Press. Her short fiction piece, Back North, is featured in Segullah’s Fall 2011 issue. She has published a novel, Lightning Tree, through Cedar Fort. Sarah has seven children and loves writing almost as much as she loves being a mom. Link here to Sarah’s other contributions to WIZ, including an excerpt of her novel.
Wilderness Interface Zone 