Loving my Editor (in haikus)

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.