Brief Interval

I knew what I was about

stroking your lovely

neck in the perilously

brief

interval at the intersection of

desire, the real, and feminist

derring-do.

And if the intersection is three

or four points of variance,

divergence, diversion,

aversion, and hapless brief

interval

larger than the grid,

in dread of a walled corner,

a piano stool, a

contraband .38,

and that flip of an

eye eros,

oh, throat

I don’t do well with

expectation. Come up

here if it’s too cool a

story below with your

windows cracked.

Higher is warmer

in this last,

fast

phantasmic

interval.

Copyright © 2019 by Cheryl Clarke. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 13, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.