Leonore Wilson
V3:E2 February, 2000

AMOROSO

Behind the painter’s double doors, I can hear the casual
         and not so casual touching as the many tiny pleats

of her skirt spread around her like a certain emptiness
         expanding, her nipples covered with teeth-marks,

the colored imprints on her thighs that confirm her,
         purple-black as berries, as red currants, as the blood

colored snake in the cloistered garden near the white
         chapel, where the sick-sweet dove moans in confusion

or envy, I cannot tell which. O but I want to enter
         her body with him as he takes her from behind,

how I weaken in a room smelling of candles and turpentine,
         oils and salt so much so that I want to be her hip,

waist and belly, the bluish veins beneath her tongue,
         the taste of lipstick on her teeth, I would drink

her milk directly, refold the note in her pocket which says
         love me, I would be the bloody handkerchief

in his hand, the red smear itself; yes I wish these walls
         were transparent to see into them, how her history

intensifies when he is inside her, under the plaid blanket,
         their bones thin as teak, their animal divinity

like Bach’s early fugues, their heat the archeology
         of memory unearthing documents, these lovers

who live before me and live after me so that they come
         out of me and I am mirrored in them.



Location: Napa, California
Email: Poet707@aol.com
Occupation: Teaches creative writing at Napa Valley College







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