Our tongues: today, rotund.

Tomorrow, robust.
Tomorrow, our tongues:

salves melted over our lips—
your peppermint sugars. My milk saps.

Hedone, slung shot,
is at some sober point

aborted again.

Where any girl could O,
for you, I
SO—

SO, my ghastly. My favorite incisors,
blown-in like sign poles post-
snowsquall.

SO carnivore
when you can afford,
dealing in, among other
gravitationals,
casual sex and Antiques Roadshow.
SO what if I imagine

from scratch (like how some
in smelling taste,

how some in sleeping-off, revive)
your hand there, and mine—

not holding, quite, but
withholding what?

I can’t help these odes.
Even knowing

language on the page won’t
lure you,
I continue

to elaborate to no one, and to one

loosened brick,
to one brittle nest, to one peeled limb

stroking a window that’s been

clamped shut,
letting no one in.