Transcendental Love Song
For Carl
This love dares not speak its name
in some states
until your eyes say it
on a beach in Ft. Lauderdale,
staring into mine
and the cosmos spins
out of my iris y nos nubla
y nos vuela into the postulated sky
of matted matter and sparkling light
safely in a haze of shadows and shine,
away from the marches against our marriages
and the congressional bills
against our histories being taught.
I cannot say how much I love you
in Brickell or Tampa
but I can look back at you
painting perfectly a thousand ways
for me to say, “be mine.”
Don’t you see? This is not
a barren love. Ours is a lust
like hydrogen or helium.
Once we have each other,
we need not be named
to be elemental, to be beyond
city or state. We need not
be named to be animal, raw,
and rocket shipped,
shooting through the universe
with the engine’s torque pulling us
even closer together than
“skin to skin” could ever describe.
Notes:
This poem is part of the portfolio “The Chorus These Poets Create: Twenty Years of Letras Latinas.” You can read the rest of the portfolio in the December 2024 issue.
Source: Poetry (December 2024)