By Ann Tweedy
i’ve heard it in songs: all roads lead to where i stand
and in all kinds of music still, your lips’ refrain
i know where this is heading as though everything held
close
did not enter the same void, as though there were degrees
of fragile and we happened upon the smallest and most
breakable
when your lips touched my stomach for the first time—
and when they touch it every new time—
the muscles of that cradle arch up and curve
my slightly sunken plane when you turn from me,
your eyes iron, unwilling, the child locked
out in a rainstorm cries on the doorstep
because you deny yourself that bit of shame
i don’t know where this i began or where the void begins
and i or we end. i only know how to stand in the
now of your hot skin, of your grainy, soldered love
and look out on a world that falls apart or holds together
however much i let myself believe in the raveled stitch of dream
Ann Tweedy’s first full-length book, The Body’s Alphabet (Headmistress Press), earned a Bisexual Book Award and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Ann also has published three chapbooks: Beleaguered Oases, White Out, and A Registry of Survival. She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and five Best of the Net Awards. A law professor by day, Ann has devoted her career to serving Native Tribes. She recently moved from South Dakota to Mississippi in the U.S., although she still lives in South Dakota part-time. Read more at www.anntweedy.com.