Lady mine, so passing fair, 
Would’st thou roses for thy hair? 
Would’st thou lilies for thy hand?
Bid me pluck them where they stand. 
Those are warm and red to see, 
These are cold. Are both like thee? 
Brow of lily, lip of rose, 
Heart that no man living knows!
If one knelt beside thy feet, 
Would’st thou spurn, or love him, Sweet?

^{The subject of lesbianism is very ordinary […]
            — Judy Grahn}

in darkness of March’s midnight          she is eyes:
            moon rays rebound lake ripples to eggplant purple walls
your hands find her body         face lies upturned, opened
            smaller than weeks prior. She knows you prefer protruding hip bones,
feels hungered for by you,       not memory of the boy, her brother 
diaphragms guttural groan,      cold in body bag not on pleated comforter,
            you’ve described your favorite body your type as “heroin skinny” 
she knows you like the ripples of her torso but            before you knew her brother  
also concave trajectory to pelvis bones            as drug addict,
            loving you is an argument with the impossible.

^{Gelatin silver print, Hal Fischer, 1977}

I swear, this filthy light could pass clean
            through me. My body—stretched & strung

across a wooden cross. Counterfeit
            Christ, corset abandoned in the corner.

There’s a precision to the intimacy
            of this ritual; strangers’ vicarious

hunger for gentle violence; being made
            a spectacle in a room filled up with spectacle.

It takes a measure of restraint. A precise
            velocity & angle to make wood or leather

into thunder. Snap & paint a red horizon
            on my spine, my ass, my chest, or thighs.

Mark skin the tint of stolen pomegranates
            split against cement, then faded to the shade

of winter figs. A broken still life—landscape
            layered over landscape. The gathered bodies:

Dom & sub, whip & cross & crowd, create
            a lexicon of their desires. Even the image

desires something—witness. When asked
            why he took the pictures of bondage gear

without a body in the frame, Fischer said:
            because it would have been too real.

Would have pushed too hard against
            an invisible boundary. Even the empty

frame demands something—a body
            to fill it. I fill it with a memory. My body

of hazy lines & thin glass longing
            to shatter.