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More of the Same
Even with my mouth on your thigh
I want my mouth on your thigh.
At the center bite of bread I want the whole loaf,
toasted. An orange. On a sunny day
I want more sun, more skin for the weather.
I'm in Seattle wishing for Seattle,
for this walk along the water, for her hand while I hold it:
I want to tie my wrist to a red balloon.
I'm counting my tips.
I'm counting the tips I could have made.
I want the television on, the television off.
In the ocean, I want to float an inch above it.
And when my father finally held me
like a stripe of seaweed over his wet arm,
I was kicking to get away, wishing he'd hold me
like he held me while I was kicking away. Listen to me.
I want to leave when I'm walking out the door.
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Kary Wayson is the author of The Slip (Burnside Review), winner of the Burnside Review Prize; American Husband (The Ohio State University Press), winner of the Charles B. Wheeler prize; and Dog & Me (LitRag Press), a chapbook. Her poems have appeared in The Nation, Image, The Rumpus, Bennington Review, The Yale Review, and the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. She lives in Port Orchard, WA, across the water from Seattle, where she's a reviews editor at Poetry Northwest.
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Peter Paul Rubens, Abundance (Abundantia), ca. 1630, oil on panel