Bread & Water

American Poetry Review, The, Jan/Feb 1997 by Lima, Frank

What good am I if I'm not a fish?.

A loaf of bread?

Are my lips made of bullets?

The day has lost its faucet

Its grip on life

I rinse my mouth with your daily morning Because you are the spatula Used to create windows The clouds in the hospitals On your submarine white skin Like lungs dreaming of veiny gas Against the drops of night

Ignition Is where aeriferous shame Falls on noisy streets Incomplete without your hideouts Your softness has a thousand legs There was sleep before life Strangers came with cars before God With their maps of Eskimos And their tombs of passion From the whale's room

Women are rivers that water children They are the ropes of their fathers Like the passion in the desert They die in their father's hands They are the ants of Israel

Is it only souls that can become bees? There are trillions of them without wings Like rags between your mother's prayers

Beloved balm of her placenta The whisper of cakes to me Ancient wife to all my fingers My Venus fleeting seconds You are my daily loss

I am the kiss banging at your door You are keys I have lost.