Khmer Rouge

To open this issue is to give way
yield to the gush of blood and time
pushing me, without a mind to know why, back
into a glowing Gold Rush Bodie or
pre-war Saigon with its smells of
soup and charcoal braziers and livestock
dirty bare feet marking time with purpose
over a thin veneer of French harlot.
The century-old Chinaman is turned discreetly
away while he prepares you for me.
I wait because the waiting is good.
The waiting lets me believe I still have a choice.
He finally lifts the memory to my mouth.
There is reverence; a dedication to craft
in his hands as I breathe you back into me
I’m ushered through that strange quality of
light in waking up from an afternoon sex nap
waking to a cool sheet and slightly damp hair
and that steep, steep western light raking
our terrain.
Guiding me this way
to the unspoken knowledge
that
we will make love again soon
then over here to knowing
that I have never been so thoroughly known
and just there is the mango and cream incident.
I hope he remembers to leave certain doors
closed. The Abandoned.  The Lie.
The realization that we can’t live
in the French harlot
veneer; that it breaks and
we become the
inevitable, the ordinary.
Leave those shut and bring me another afternoon.
Let the tiger run loose in my blood.