REMEMBER THE FRUIT, THE BODY WANTS

heidi andrea restrepo rhodes


your voice falls on my ears. spring rain.
so different off the telephone.


this arm, I wonder of its might & what gentle ways it drums
the table when the radio sings something honest. this hand,


how it holds a pen, what the finger dreams of, what entreats
the ink. other choreographies extending to the tip.


remember the fruit, halved. its jupiter drip where I entered.
remember the fallen pine. the flash teeth grin of sudden wit.
remember the barrel of grains.


I don’t know in what ways:              your body wants
                                             to be with                       my body


your body wants a body is with a body
                           in what ways to be with my body
                                                    to be with your body wants

             my body, a body with a body


(there are so many ways            what ways          a body is with a body)


but please let me name            the seasons I live
                                                    here beside you in an hour


this no winterspringsummerfall
a calendar of beginnings,           middles,            & ends
nor a brick by brick
                        account
                        of upright


perhaps a litany of pleasures in an order unfamiliar to the land


how I have many times failed at grace
the yellout, the cry for joy
distills the universe of my own  
we touch something infinite                 in the face

                                       of this wild

                                                                              electric elaboration

to in that very moment offer
a piece of cake, or whatever you crave in the morning.
                                                                               lit in me.


in rearranging what one calls                   “god”—ecstatic force.
how you put me           out                                                  of place.


I recall the pleasure that is                          yet

                                                          to arrive, something futurelike

a sensation on                    its way


how, if you grant me                        the firth of your jaw
surely I will kiss you,


                                            which is to say

             

                I will feed you

                                            a mouthful of snow.

 

heidi andrea restrepo rhodes

is a queer, Colombian/Latinx poet and scholar from California. Her first poetry collection, The Inheritance of Haunting (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019) was selected by Ada Limón for the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. She is a doctoral candidate in Political Theory at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Her poetry has been seen in publications such as Poetry, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Split this Rock, Raspa, and Nat.Brut. She currently lives in Brooklyn, and can be found on instagram at: @vessels.we.are