
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