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Haiku Free Verse Prosies
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I.
The beautiful woman in the mirror
takes her clothes off: black satin on white skin,
a reluctant virgin.
She becomes me
with the ankles thick in the wool socks
She becomes me. I am missing you
the distance between moon and water,
the distance between you and me pulling
like the tide, difficult to say without
becoming clunky ankles without --
The beautiful women all around me,
they writhed and shouted.
They tipped back their bottles.
They leaned on their pool cues.
One to the other, each one different,
each one shining luminous
like the stones at the edge of the surf,
beautiful when wet, within their element,
unremarkable when dry, outside of it.
I met a woman from Plymouth,
descended from sailors and fishermen.
Dark hair, fair skin. She carried herself
like a tightly packed pistol.
She spoke an English I barely understood,
chopping her vowels, clipping her consonants,
with a laugh at the end.
I danced with her.
We wove a dark, silk cord between us.
She bit me on the shoulder, made me shiver, disappeared.
I took a Kenyan woman full of curves
to the beach. It was raining.
In the dark, we stepped off of a sand dune
and fell eight feet to the edge of the ocean.
Neptune lapped at our heels. He was hungry.
We clambered in the sand. It crumbled beneath us.
"I don't think we can do this," she said.
"We have to!" I shouted, prayed to the ocean,
chanted the names of the Goddess,
dug my fingers and toes
in the crumbling cliff.
I put my hands on that nice, round ass
and pushed. She couldn't climb over
She pushed me and I pulled my body over the lip.
I made her grab onto my foot. I rooted myself.
I pulled her up.
We lay panting in the sand.
It was in our clothes, our mouths.
Rain splashed down on us. It was very dark.
I kissed her. She tasted like liquor.
I drove her home.
She asked me in, but I declined.
II.
Missing you has taken over my life,
turned my mind into a battleground.
I will not think of you. I will not.
Pulling up from sleep's highway,
I had a respite.
There was a view, which I've forgotten.
There was the ocean, and scrubby pines
and a beautiful woman with dark, curly hair.
I remember touching her skin, its smoothness,
soft, hairless, luminous, like the stones
wet at the edge of the ocean.
But then I remembered you
and the pull began again.
Missing you here is like missing you at home
but with the smell of the sea
and light all around me.
III.
This boat is full of Germans
speaking a language full of consonants.
The boat lulls me,
bumping against the tires on the docks,
the sun is warm on my face.
Soon, we will push off into the deep
and see huge mammals that swim in the sea.
Someone at the wheel knows these waters,
can read the charts of them,
has sailed them before.
I am glad to be on the boat with them.
This boat is full of Germans kissing,
Americans kissing, man to woman,
woman to man, bloated with privilege,
blatant and unconscious. Knowing it and not knowing it.
Even here, at the tip of the continent,
here where we congregate and hold our lovers' hands in public,
even here they push at us.
If you were here, I would want to kiss you
and I would be one one of them.
If you were a woman, I would bury my face
in your breasts every evening.
I would put my hands inside you
and you would feel like the ocean in August.
You would taste like the sea.
Instead, you dive into me. I push against you.
Your body is hard. Hair covers it.
I love what's inside of it, the delicate colors
within the twisted contours of a Schiele painting.
IV.
After whale watching, I am too tired to miss you.
These straight people sicken me,
clenching their lawful mates' hands.
I want to draw up to them and hiss,
"Hold on tight. You might catch it. You might die
of it. Hold on tight."
If you and I were here,
I couldn't touch you like that. They'd
hiss at me, "Hold on tight."
There is no place for us yet on this earth.
On the beach, I lie under a dune and think of you,
how it would be so much better with you here beside me,
how we'd roll in the sand
Remember when you told me,
on your back beneath me crying,
the story of what you'd lost:
the girl who loved you,
your child in her belly,
who would have married you and lived
happily ever after. How you ruined it.
How she left you, aborted the baby,
how you drank more.
Remember how I told you,
"You couldn't have had that happiness
even if she'd stayed. You weren't ready for it."
This is akin to my wish
for you here beside me now.
Frances Donovan
May 1998
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