Immortality
At first she touched me everywhere,
floating in her womb, even between her legs
in the intolerable glare of the operating room
when I tore open the world with my drenched body,
tore her open with the width of my body,
bloodying its way to this place of light, of self,
of chairs I sit on, tables where I eat, of time.
A life keeps dissolving in my mind --
tongue, lips that sucked creases, eyelids and ears, vulva,
nose, chin,
succulent mouth, toes, toenails, armpits, neck --
fading until the mystery of having a body
is wisps, is silent space, the dust of space.
Stephen Berg's most recent books are X= , Shaving , New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press) and Oblivion (U of Illinois Press). These books and others by Stephen Berg are available at Amazon.Com.
Copyright ©1996 Stephen Berg. All rights reserved.