to be corporeal, but my vision retreats to cells and chemicals
in the wash of your blood: first capillary then follicle,

then rough-honed epidermis. And while this explanation satisfies
the forensic detail of science, on reflection, I prefer to dwell

in differences, reaching for the other side of the species, and you.
I touch your face – a Venn diagram seeking its overlap.

2.
I see you charting the geography of your mouth –
lips parted, your tongue divining water.

A crack like small arms fire when you bite is torment.
Pain like shot metal cleaves out. We have no automated repair –

no shark’s teeth like a bandsaw wave on primitive wave.
The human metronome measures the time it takes

to ponder love, comb your hair, order a meal. Our DNA
is stardust, but then – this jagged tor and ruinous smile.

You shrug – another loss on your way to the terminus,
one more shard of marble gone to angels.

3.
I don’t cultivate them as I do seedlings or an even temper,
and painting them isn’t worth the drying time

or worry that a scarf and bag won’t match three applications
of London Bus red. When you lie down and I rake

the inside of your arm, my nails find a fulcrum under the skin,
a connection point into epidermal wiring, along a meridian

that speaks in a language of dreams. My nails are
a catchment of Australian Grey edged with white,

my upper lip bruised from a charcoal stick’s last light.
Tonight there are unexplained scratches like fine webbing

behind your knees. I trace them and ruminate on
a recurring dream about a woman who turns

to a man she loves, and as he sleeps, leaves the calligraphy
of a river in flood on his skin without waking him.

4.
I’d call to you, my voice lost in the rooftop birch
and priory windows, the dark Schiele sticks of landscape,

yet the wind twirls skinny leaves, and you’d swear
a cold spring fed into my wanting you here.

Your absence is sultry heat and warm rain,
humidity pearling your thighs, the cartography

of your spine a stain each vertebrae wears.
Bring your breakers with you: bring the red-eyed birds

and the rain-soaked cups. Bring the sharp green
of a downpour. Darken the level crossing – leave it unsigned.

Egon Schiele is a major twentieth-century Austrian painter whose landscapes echo the dark twisted lines of his figurative work.