Again
The curve of your neck where I nestle smells like the future. I hold you everywhere and as often. I never tire of rustling these pages. Your spine runs my fingers down. Every vertebra softly presses yes until they all run together in a symphony, in downy sighs of fur chorusing. Your spine runs my fingers up, skin soft and taut spread across your back’s map. Each freckle is a fret and each shoulder a sharp curve to the perfect body of your guitar. At the top of the chord, another resonance of yes, a rustle of pages, a neck that smells like my future, my everywhere and as often. You turn me over, sounding tuning notes with your bow, tapping our harmonic rhythm, opening your arms to me. I sigh, yes,
Again.
Robert Eric Shoemaker is a poet, translator, and interdisciplinary artist. Eric is the author of Magical Poetics (Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming), Ca’Venezia (2021, Partial Press), We Knew No Mortality (2018, Acta Publications), and 30 Days Dry (2015, Thought Collection Publishing). Eric’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Translation, and has been published in Rain Taxi, Zone 3, Tupelo Quarterly, Spoon River Poetry Review, and other venues. Follow him at reshoemaker.com.
