"What Cleveland Tastes Like"
I feel you in another time, the white
in the whiter shade of pale--
stretched out on the hardwood,
curls falling like one dark wing
across the brow. Your blue eyes
are closed but I can see
what a beautiful man you are--
a mouth that carries a kiss in it
for everything. And here is Cleveland
tucked safely beneath your lids, ready
with it's steel heart to be
the city you need. I feel how good
that hurts. The way the limbs of iron
ore docks stretch along the planks
of the Cuyahoga, the river
that once caught fire like a man
who brought his words to the world
and left it through the barrel of a gun.
I see honest homes and the tails
of smokey factories whipping up
into the clouds. A city growing taller
with every poem you wrote. How you loved
her the way spring loves its cherry blossoms.
The way a young man enters
a prostitute like a rain soaked alley.
I want to live in your past. See the first
time your tongue slipped into blueflower.
What did you taste in that deep Cleveland?
And if you'd known me then
you would have savored the tang--
the jazz house and the rough edges
of my rivers. What kisses we would
have wasted--two boats broken
from their mooring under a rusted bridge.
I'm afraid to love something
with so much in it. Now that you have
given me your past. Train tracks
stretching out to you like a ladder.
© 2009 Emusing (Lois P. Jones)
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