an indelible feather

An upright abutment in the mouth
of the Willis Avenue bridge
a beige Honda leaps the divider
like a steel gazelle inescapable
sleek leather boots on the pavement
rat-a-tat-tat best intentions
going down for the third time
stuck in the particular

You cannot make love to concrete
if you care about being
non-essential wrong or worn thin
if you fear ever becoming
diamonds or lard
you cannot make love to concrete
if you cannot pretend
concrete needs your loving

To make love to concrete
you need an indelible feather
white dresses before you are ten
a confirmation lace veil milk-large bones
and air raid drills in your nightmares
no stars till you go to the country
and one summer when you are twelve
Con Edison pulls the plug
on the street-corner moons Walpurgisnacht
and there are sudden new lights in the sky
stone chips that forget you need
to become a light rope a hammer
a repeatable bridge
garden-fresh broccoli two dozen dropped eggs
and a hint of you
caught up between my fingers
the lesson of a wooden beam
propped up on barrels
across a mined terrain

between forgiving too easily
and never giving at all.

~Audre Lorde (1934-1992), "Making Love to Concrete" from The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance, published 1993. I was originally going to post sexy Audre Lorde poetry, because there has really not been enough erotic in among the cantankerous and sublime, this month, but then this one kind of got under my skin.

I am leaving for the Netherlands at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow, and have yet to pack or anything of the sort, so there is a very good chance I will be posting again, tonight. For one thing, I am not taking my laptop (oh god oh god oh god), and will almost certainly be preemptively posting poetry for Tuesday and Wednesday sometime in the wee hours. I have a plan. More in a while. For now: laundry.