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A Crescendo of Rain
by Sarah Maclay
Tonight, I don’t resent the party sounds at the end of the street
but I am wrong about the iris—
it has no stamen, which you prove
by splaying me apart
as if I’m made of legs,
made of petals—
I am made of leggy petals
and you grasp them.
The flannel-clouded sky a white quilt
gathered and twisted, the whole sky
a bed. An apricot
so ripe it falls apart
in my hand, its splitting
not so much a splitting
as a falling open.
Even blue, the sky is full of rain.
The pavement sweats.
I learn to suck nourishment
from your flat, ocean breast.
Deep spring. Piano. Glass.
Lightning, a rumor of thunder
as though the curtains had moved in the wind.
(A rumor of thunder.) The sage,
the feather, the guava, the rain
and the period blood release
all at once. A mourning
dove is moaning something
I no longer know.
Wind is blowing a flag of begonias.
Wind is blowing the white gladiolas.
Ocean of salt, ocean of roses.
From "Whore" (University of Tampa Press).