I’M AS TIRED OF WRITING

ABOUT SEX AS YOU ARE

OF READING ABOUT IT:

TREVOR NEWBERRY

I’m tired of how thick-cut pomegranate

makes me think of your spread legs.

And I’m so over how when you stand

in your little bikini with your feet

in the sand, horizon at your back, I want

to pluck you like calendula and eat you.

Oh, and I’m tired of how images of the gulf

swell like pushed coital sways, warm

as a fresh-drawn bath and wet as, well . . .

And what about golf? Long, wooden

clubs flailed at balls racing toward holes.

Or sailors with their jibs and main masts

and bedsheet sails spread-eagle

to the licking cirrus. And poop decks.

Or the Grand Canyon left gaping

by rivers and time, or the stylist’s

begging hands as she shampoos my scalp,

or dangling participles, or raw red tuna

before it’s sliced and wrapped in white sticky rice,

before you dip it and slip it in your mouth,

or the way waiting lines snake

around a theater, sizzling with impatience,

or how poured concrete waits to harden

and be used, or how when we write

a poem that yanks our hearts

into submission, we need a smoke

or a long nap after. Or when it’s so quiet

and cold we can hear our own breaths,

we can see them rising, wearing ice and steam.

Or when you see her standing

in a field on Thanksgiving, pulling at a pumpkin,

her bare feet red and ripe, heels digging back

into the earth, back into the supple dirt where sprouts

sprung from rain and seed, back into stems,

back into buds, back into plump red fruit,

back up her calves and thighs,

back to where all the good things in life began.