Impurities now smolder in the pan
I filled with water to boil
just before you arrived in my kitchen
thirsty and jealous
of the minutes we'll spend apart when I move.
The promises of phone cards and plane tickets
rang like cheap glass tapped with a silver spoon.
We swallowed one another whole
as the bubbling water arose
from the hissing stove
and became our oxygen--
I refill the pan with water
thinking how we, too, might burn away
like the water into spirits
hovering above bits of pulsing earth,
but who's to say what's ever sufficient
in the process of purifying
self-composed pollutants?
Only a starving artist of herself
knows what might remain
when there's nothing to left to drink.
If you shrink your ego pocketsized
you have nothing to give.
Desire is a perversion
of eros, pushing our lips
to sip such a curious substance
as one another's imperfections;
it's the science of why
even in moments of anger,
I love you.
BIO: Cindy Childress is working on a Ph. D. in creative
writing and women's studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Cindy co-hosts the monthly reading series, Breathing Space, and she
recently shared her poetry at the Graduate Women's Studies Symposium at
York University in Toronto. Her work has been published recently in the
Austin International Poetry Anthology 2004, The Southwestern
Review, The Canadian Women's Studies Journal, and can be found on
the CD, Vital Signs: The Primal Sessions. EMAIL:
Childress15@cs.com
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