POETRY May 24, 2013

Four Poems

Learn The Dark

I haunt
the streets where I wonder if
my former lovers feel my
planetary pull. I am trapped between
two moons: you tell me if I were a man
and you were a woman you’d
let me touch your body tonight. I feel
my own fish squirming, and
your hands, batwings, pulse and
peel open—
we don’t touch.
I go to the graveyard searching for meaning.
I go to hear all the death: little Eliza Olin, gone
since 1832, and me so alive; I must spook her.
Then—
—body noise: breath moving liquid.
And I hear all the life:
the orgasms blinking outward
like rescue signals at dawn. Men fucking
by the precious headstones of the orphans.
A slip, a grind, a burn, okay—
Only when I am this thirsty do I
drink the spit of strangers. Later, I
dreamt your wet stretches
of saliva fell into me; you
let the bulbs burn out, opened
your mouth, and let me learn the dark.

Suzanne Richardson earned her MFA from the University of New Mexico in 2012. She currently lives in Utica, New York where she is an assistant professor of English at Utica College. Her work has appeared in New Ohio Review, New Haven Review, Blood Orange Review and Front Porch among others. You can find more of her work at: http://www-suzannerichardsonwrites.tumblr.com