Pleasure Palace

Christine Kwon

I could direct your eye or tapping foot,
direct your ear but I could not direct you here,
a bright green place, the sun flooding leaves
instead of lids, as if I placed them there, in pleasure
of my body and the world, minus body and world,
the relationship left to move bodiless, like a season.
Once, mid-dance, a girl's eyes, like Vaseline,
clarified, rolling to white as if in sudden boil.
She had been mouthing along.
I saw a word taut between her lips and life,
its twisting shape, and I knew
it wasn't solely drugs but her backpedaling,
her posture alone in bed, its embarrassing requests,
clinging to the effluvial, stamped, glittered, lost.

Christine Kwon is a poet and fiction writer living in New Orleans. Her work has been published in Joyland Magazine and Sweet Mammalian.
Originally published:
January 1, 2015

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