Fish Out of Water
As cars pull in the lot behind the old warehouse
kicking up gravel to make a U-turn
and a perched grackle wings its way
toward a branch, close enough that I can see
the feathers spiked roughly beneath the beak,
an iridescent weight making limbs sway,
I sit on the bank of the Missouri
not knowing where else to be.
The muddy river seems still almost
except for the places where it whorls.
Every few minutes a fish flips itself into the air
and then splashes beneath the surface,
something I can’t catch, but try to—
the tattoo on your right arm, the moth there
in motion. You work by moving things
into positions, by reversing a scrap of paper,
by pasting your body hair beneath the text:
Getting Down to Business. Yesterday, a piece of
oblong fabric—a wobbly presence—
belonged here, floating about the frame.
And today, what could be
the arms of a cactus
makes more sense by itself.
Each shape is revealed by the spaces
in-between. Rolled together in the night
you weren’t sure how to speak at first of
your body’s position to mine
but then you could.
The small-town heat makes everything stick,
our skin pressing into one another,
the hair soft and light above your tailbone—
I won’t forget how you directed me there.