Matches Ghazal
Working through a regiment of dull-headed sleeping soldiers to find a willing match,
I smell a ship, a bed, a damp house. Such heat cast by a life measured match by match.
It begins in the rare books aisle: a request, then an invitation. On the pavement, we watch
noonday traffic yawn. You pull two cigarettes from your pocket and I offer you a match.
Small talk, wine, homemade ragù, more wine, then surrender, lubricant, your bed
a mattress on the floor. Locked bodies confuse the moves made in a tango and a match.
Late summer evening in a beer garden, drunk, you slam down your pint glass, smack
foam from your mouth and announce I could be good for you, yes, even a match.
What noises now, on a sedate suburban night? At the end of Catherine Road, a willow
dips her fingers in black ink. The wind hisses through them like a suddenly spent match.
We strike, fail, strike, it doesn’t catch — the gesture is too timid or too strong. Which
person’s story to believe when at sunrise the bruises on each partner’s body match?