[Intimacy unhinged, unpaddocked me]
By Diane Seuss
Intimacy unhinged, unpaddocked me. I didn’t want it.
Believe me, I didn’t want it anymore. Who in their
right mind? And then it came like an ice cream truck
with its weird tinkling music, its sweet frost. I fled
to the shore and saw how death-strewn, all the body
parts washed up and sucked clean like that floor mosaic
by Sosus of Pergamon, Unswept House. Seabirds
flocked and dematerialized like they do. Bees raged
at their own dethroning. Love came close anyway,
found me out, its warped music all the rage. It had
a way, just by being in proximity, of opening
the shells of the bivalves. Disclosing their secret
meat. One doesn’t really suck on frozen sugar water.
One allows it to melt in the oven of the mouth.
Copyright Credit: Diane Seuss, "[Intimacy unhinged, unpaddocked me]" from frank: sonnets. Copyright © 2021 by Diane Seuss. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.
Source: frank: sonnets (Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org)