Fly Love Poem

Leslie Seamans

 
 
 

This morning, at approximately ten forty-two
Immediately after me & my love had come
Up together out of the sea like behemoths ---
His back scratched with passionate
Barnacles --- he my sweet god's love of ages
   Calls me a "bloodsucking witch."

I swear to you, he lies out side me
Purblind piebald worm gone dead
And dumb --- paisley sheets littered,
Dark with 500,000 of his shrimpseed,
Face pale the face of poached scrod:
And he gives forth with a listless litany,
Terminating in piscean spouts of
   "Selfish." "Blood." "Sucking." "Witch."

Over the hemisphere of our rumpled bed,
Nine (count them) nine flies circle constantly:
A minute mosca imbroglio. I carefully consider
Their fat yellow-brown thoraxes filled with
Ugly juices; watch the blue-grey whorl
Of their wings: ceaseless, hopeless ---
   The endless rotation of
      Ceaseless, hopeless beasts.

Some flies, I find, are more cantankerous
Than others: mixing freely with their fellows
Like anger at smoke rising from our cigarettes.
Some are more --- how shall I say it? ---
Of a more pragmatic, phlegmatic turn.
One laggard gets wrangled in those far
Dark, pasty, disgusting hairs ---
Then he rejoins the threnody
   At their eleven a.m.
      Sargasso rounds.

Passionless fish-bodies turn in oceans, nu?
The sour smell of seajuice taken captive by
Kidnapping: the hostage in foreign waters.
Some few loves can, perhaps, be saved
From this Dead Sea. Others, I'm sure,
Turn up like shells from the dark
   Dry circlings in the sand.

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