Desire
Despy Boutris
| poetry
begins with the sight of someone
else’s eyes, voice pulled taut
by a ribbon of smoke, apples
of cheeks reddened like seawater
in the evening light.
A volcanic eruption, one body
surging toward another, determined
to scorch skin, safe
from the cloudburst outside.
Your lips are suction cups
and I a window, a whole suburb
spread with sheets drying
on clotheslines. Want the width
of your spread-eagle thighs.
No, wider. Outside, a train cries out
for our attention,
not knowing we’ve been wired
to this bed for hours, volcanic
in our bursts of pleasure,
which is to say: louder than the train.
Though we imitate its sound
against the tracks,
that familiar, fast pace.
Despy Boutris’s writing has been published in Copper Nickel, Guernica, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, Agni, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of The West Review.