Unspun

[ziarre]

unspun

They were in a truck
below the bridge, I on a catwalk
spanning the ignorant midsummer river,
only passing by, peering down.
I saw just hands, parts of clothes,
sticky white fingertips, her honeyed hem
dropping threads
like something loose in a tapestry.

They were the blood that hastened hot
to my cheeks, the dust I brushed
off my heels to march on; all afternoon,
the image clinging unctuously,
I pictured the faces of girls I knew
and tried to match them to
that sweet brown thigh,
dappled by a prism revolving in the light.

Infidelity is itself a machine
faithful to one thing, two -
an assailable need,
to moments enacted in a void, or
time outside the dial.

We were in a room, a chamber,
one of indistinguishable thousands within buildings
inside the city
and she was smoking thin import cigarettes, or
pretending to,
we all were.
And the TV was laughing, no-one else,
as the cat pulled
at my sweater with its teeth, unravelling it.
When she said Do you think God
can hear us right now?
and we held our breaths, sweaty,
waiting for the reply.