WHEN WE MAKE LOVE, SOMEONE IS ALWAYS CRYING
The sex is starless, at first,
hits like too much rain,
our bodies wet tomato peels
rubbing on each other.
I know it’s time when
you take your glasses off
and rest them on the windowsill.
We grow into it, our love a pair of pants,
while the rest of the world smokes.
Fires destroy Australia.
Pangolins, your favorite animal,
edge extinction. The hens
outside have stopped singing.
They are sad, sick of the losing,
weary of everything
these days, even their own eggs,
fearing the hands that steal them
from beneath their stomachs
each morning, next after next.
Still, they trill for change,
although nothing will change.
The wildfires will spread,
the pangolins’ keratin will fade,
there will be another unexplainable violence—
some white knife, some pear skin—
and we will be here, making love again
as if our bodies, together, bring meaning.
—from Poets Respond
March 3, 2020
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Samantha Fain: “The Australian bush fires are over, or at least that’s what the news says. But what’s the next tragedy that’s going to come along? I wanted this poem to investigate our abilities as humans to make meaning while living adjacent to disaster.” (web)
