gold street
If your version forgets to mention the girls
shedding skin
beneath duvets,
a top
names of those who’ve come before
this stain willing more than wanting
i n v e s t i gate the weeping boy in your shoulders—frankly
you have been wanted unnaturally
in showers of apartments by Gare du Nord
bathing your scent onto memory
under shifting skies
faucets running
a soundtrack for your telepathic seduction.
her chest is a wall of post cards all addressed to you
signed xo
this time last year
an ex lover googling a future worth writing about
she wont remember him.
napolean wont let him be forgotten
he texts her random shards of glass
shes just trying to day dream about your arms after the waking.
imagines the sun shy off your cheek
scattered with hair.
shared her luggage
with you, eyes gazing under the same hitchhiking moon
her mother drips regrets all along New York City pavement
calling her back, crying her back
into a wound of womb
don’t grow too
don’t grow too worldly or else
a bedroom of ocean, a back yard of rituals
no closets when wanderlust longs
keeps you longing
you hear
where
she feels
no closets
clothes dragging behind her heels.
little did you know
when you kissed
you were kissing
kissed and kissing
a mouth full of griots
all those daughters
dancing there.
many a women
buy pretty lipstick
sway their hips, giggle you into a spell
what of a woman
with soul in the grooves of
footprints
decorating earth
each step
a dimple born
what of washing
a scarred lowerback
stretch marks,
the g r a f f i t i thighs of a goddess.
aja monet
c.2011
this poem was recently published in Super Sunday Times.