Tart Honey

      Copyright © 2018 Deborah Burnham. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-3861-9

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-3862-6

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3863-3

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      Some of these poems were included, many in different versions, in the chapbook Still, published by Seven Kitchens Press, winner of the Keystone Chapbook prize in 2008.

      Unending thanks to David Staebler and Jeanne Walker.

      I

      M–Th

      Because at Monday’s dawn I kiss you hard

      and won’t touch your sweet mouth or hair again

      until Friday’s worked itself to shadow;

      Because the years we’ve kissed add up to more

      than those remaining to us, because

      I want to squeeze time like an orange—

      drinking the sweet juice, sweet flesh, eating

      even the pith, the rind, wishing to find

      another orange growing in the bitter seeds—

      I’ve sent my dreams an order: no more

      meandering through shadowed forests, no

      casual lust for plums or single malt.

      The new dream stays at home, to seize the time,

      improve each shining dawn or midnight hour.

      In Monday’s dream, your hand sits on my thigh;

      On Tuesdays, your cheek rests in my palm

      like a willing apple; by Wednesday, our

      feet are tangled, eager, and determined

      to stay ensnared in one another. By

      Friday, I’ll have dreamed each limb and part

      together, recalled the temperature and shape

      of your absent body, making present what is far,

      holding all that threatens to dissolve, disperse,

      solid as the orange, distance’s tart honey.

      Modern Love

      It’s marriage a la mode, commuter

      love; you leave with Monday’s dawn and stay

      away while four more dawns unfold across

      my single sheets. You left your worn gray

      shirt. I’ll fold it in my pillow and write

      a letter with my breath, one word over

      and again: your name, mouthed into the shirt’s

      soft threads where the rich salt of your skin still clings.

      Eking Out

      I watched Apollo 13 with you, marveling

      at the ground crew’s loving calculations:

      how much air and power they had per day,

      per hour, after the broken ship exhaled

      a shimmering cloud of oxygen into space,

      which does not need to breathe.

      Such useful lessons. How to use them now?

      On Friday nights, you’re home, I have you

      for two days, three nights, just sixty hours

      to divide among my hands, my lips, back, belly,

      trembling arms, each part ravenous, snatching

      its full share.

      One More

      Catullus, wondering how to count the kisses

      that would satisfy his lust for Lesbia,

      suggests a number: the grains of sand between

      Jove’s oracle in Egypt and some tomb

      in Libya, or—less original—the numbered fields

      of stars that try to light their furtive love.

      We’ve loved so long, I forget what “furtive”

      feels like, though years ago, we could kiss only

      in dark rooms, dark fields, hiding the thin fire that leapt

      through our legs and fingers.

      Now, it’s one brisk, public kiss that makes me think

      of those I won’t be tasting for a week or three,

      that short kiss in airport traffic, stolen

      while the cop stares, one brush against

      your earlobe, then one more, quicker, drier

      than our first, perhaps our last, this last thought

      unthinkable, the necessary single

      star that glitters, once so far away, now

      right above us, behind the waning moon.

      Some Days

      When you’re away, I cannot count

      my fingers, clumped into a fist.

      Days slide like pennies in a drawer.

      I’m like the man who fell

      headfirst on the stony path

      and lost his numbers. Couldn’t count

      the days to Friday or add

      the nickels in his pocket. Seconds

      blurred and minutes wouldn’t pass.

      When you come back, I count

      grapes and sips of wine. Each minute

      says its name too clearly, each day

      steps away, one two, one two,

      and then it’s gone.

      Blue Nudes

      1. The Dyer’s Hands

      Matisse prepared huge sheets of paper

      for his cutouts, painting them the solid

      blue of crayons, of his water jug, then sliced

      in with his ten-inch shears. His hands, stained blue,

      shaped dancing bodies, caressed the thick blue

      paper into long slow ovals,

      making our bodies think that his idea

      of