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{i do not love you} kevin l. nenstiel I do not love you as a kitten loves cream, and I do not love you as a tailor loves to mend, and I do not love you as a mother bends to brush her baby’s brow with tongue-damp lips to lift a sleep-limp hand and hold small curving fingers as a cherry holds a stone, and I do not love you as the ocean loves the shore beating home day by day tracing damp seaweed fingers over footprints of retreating gulls salt borders charting frontiers where water lashes wave on wave on wave into stone till hollows form in lofty sandstone cliffs and grass grows on the verge between the risen and the fallen tide. I love you as steel loves a smithy sculpting knives and axles for the workmen, thickset hammers singing fierce refrains ringing in grey valleys carved between ancient sweatshops where old men moan Irene Goodnight, moonlit water silver steaming on black tarmac white line side street margins Norteño rhythms rounding corners from the tape decks of smoke-blue Chevelles till third shift leaves their soot-stained smocks steel-toe boots, old cold microwave burritos to bob back home and watch the sunrise bloom gold-flame petals between breeze block homes as they perch down to sleep in the shoulders of the ones they love as I love you. |
