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| UNDERNEATH YOU | ||
| Here you are in the shuddering moment: a ladder, a sudden lifting from hands and knees into arch. This is when you become finger pressed against the baseboard, paint slivers falling from shaken windows. It is a room full of fire. The neighbors have been watching your head rising, seen frame of the window meet your halo, flash of the earrings, once, twice, across the panes. Your mouth is opening and another woman's voice is coming out, a woman who is not thinking of the future. You look down at the man underneath you, the man whose clenched legs have supported your labors. You brush the hair from his cheek. You are tender. You want to see the face of the man who has seen you coming. But he is desperately afraid. He is desperately afraid. |
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| CONTRIBUTOR | ||
| Betsy Aoki lives and writes in Seattle. This poem appeared originally in Calyx. |
