A Pornography

There was a time when I watched it happen.

Strangers pressed to other strangers

in one bed, clothes on, air humid

with the cloying scent of fruit juice

and vodka; none of us

giving into another and yet unwilling to leave the scene

of that possibility,

pretending to sleep, actually sleeping.

Then waking again to slip a hand

over a shoulder, slide a finger

inside the waistband of a skirt; so young

(we are even now still

so young) in that hotel room

turning blue then lighter blue.

We wouldn’t have tried for more:

the kiss, the button; firm, white shape

of an image slipped wholly into the mind,

acted upon, dreamed upon,

filling the thin vessels of the lungs.

Earlier, a film, its forced sounds

of lovemaking. The tension I felt winding

into the muscles of some of the others in the room.

I remember I left for awhile.

We all left for awhile;

even the music was frightening. How

to strip ourselves like that, point

at the places that were wanted, plucked

and peeled; speaking the words, hearing them form us,

the nature of what we were

and could do to each other?

The music, the rocking, the sobbing.

The man called the woman by parts of herself.

Some laughed at this. I remember

I must have been one of them.

In the morning, the hotel room was turning white.

After the long night, hands were slipping

and unslipping, moving over the flattened pillows

as if in hopes something small could still satisfy us.

Someone turned and looked at someone else;

we all heard it. Legs

shifted, sheets slid themselves down waists

or shoulders, tightened again at the necks

of those pretending to sleep as the unblinking sun

crawled in our window.

From another room, coughing,

We all heard it.

Someone looked at someone else.

The room turned white. The air began clearing.

Copyright Credit: Paisley Rekdal, "A Pornography " from The Invention of the Kaleidoscope. Copyright © 2007 by Paisley Rekdal. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh , PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: The Invention of the Kaleidoscope (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007)