Lines in Your Face

Richard Sanger
From:   Shadow Cabinet. Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1996.

And so they return, lest we forgave or forgot,
to prod and stir the pot, to greet us at cocktails,
or, there, in the gravel of the parking lot;
they return with discreet little conspiratorial grins
to remind us of our indiscretions,
our grand declarations and outlandish passions;
they return, like the outrageous fashions
we once wore or telephone bills we lost;
they return like the selves we forgot,
like mirrors we dipped ourselves in once
and slipped and swam in, fluent as moonlight
on the waves of the bed where we plunged,
flesh merged, submerged, and now we've emerged,
silver and dripping and separate,
they return to show us this cold surface,
immaculately metallic and polished and pressed
with only a ripple left where we dove in,
the mouth we kissed and the door we entered closing,
now just a quick little crease in the sheets,
this discreet little conspiratorial grin.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Richard Sanger's works copyright © to the author.