I am sure that the answer, if it gets to me one day, will have come to me from you. You alone, my love, you alone will have known it.
(The Postcard, Derrida)
Black tea, jazz purple,
amber bookshop, choke us both:
I guard the exit door,
in a fiction of watching
walkersby, and smoke and forget
I’m elongating
a business schedule;
and, dressed like Rochester, I
barely see your dress,
the colour of which
is the skin I secretly bare,
as we edit poetry;
you hold my firelight
in cigarettes between your lips,
I shiver somewhat;
I shiver so that,
while sipping from your black coffee
I have an excuse.
In my noon’s hunger
we talk of confined spaces,
wilful house arrest,
we talk of archive,
of menus and inventories:
I count your past lovers…
If we meet again,
these are the things I will need
to know how you feel:
I will need hunger,
the winter, your lips, my fire,
and numbers to count
so countless that I lose
count and forget, your lovers,
I will need a space
too confined, in your words
“infinitesimal” space,
and then I will need
you, not an inch or less;
how can so much recur at once
without your knowledge?
In my hunger and cold,
I infer you will live hereon
as a schizophrenic,
while you versify
your coastal velvet sex lives
my Sam will play on;
and, I can sip your
purple jazz, your black coffee,
go on editing
the text of your skin,
the texture of your ears, your throat
your lips, just by me.
