Sex at Forty-Five
by rob mclennan
If grace, it could be elongated
to the point of the grotesque –
Elizabeth Robinson, Carrington
This is to draw thick black lines around existence, with one small corner
left blank for a different resolution.
Susanne Dyckman, “OMEN”
Retreat, into the body. Lexical. Dark side of my tongue. What
you seek of. Formulated.
Interrupted, rupture.
The nightly juke-box of the baby’s breathing, intermittent cries. We
hold collective breath.
Each silence, opportunity.
The body, like a theatre. Translated. Distance, is a chorus.
Earth and sky. A single hair that drips.
Manifold, and muscled. Treble clef. Illiteral, the singularity
of this, and you.
Is there a way to measure? Words
we’ve yet to learn. The comforter. Concerto. A nest
of bedframe; warm.
A sound, a scope. Such common genre. Bled.
Such reason, cast. Enmeshed.
The benefits, incalculable.
Many branches in the tree. A thought drilled out to talk.
Tendon. Caught, in the throat. Into the eyes like sleep.
Such introspection. Misses the point.
Chimes of ready-rising, thirst. Ice water, nightstand.
If zero marks the place.
The sky, divided. Equal portions.
Dark, and too slow. Familiar. This, the comfort. Limbinal:
of snaking limbs. The ears we lend, unmake.
How, we further: lines our hands should tremble.
Below, the wheels. What’s winged? Uncertainties, syllabled. Warbled, air
and broadcast.
Shouldered law. Declined, I suddenly. Discarded socks. The slightest chance.
We do not think in sentences. Magnificent silence.
No longer only skin.
Nestled, in. A mouth of fairness,
bordering on tenor. Occasional, orchestrated. Almost scheduled,
given household. Toddler rustles, gently.
Did you start the dishwasher? Pull the clean laundry?
An age of certain-somethings; a tension. Pilfered,
quake, and shatter.
Damn your lyrics, your pretty abstracts: we want details.
As each division fades. Fingers, rubbing. Words.
The music of the pulse: it walks all over.
Sex at Forty-Five is out of print from The Blasted Tree Store
Featured by The Blasted Tree: October 6, 2017
rob mclennan
Contributing Author
Other works on The Blasted Tree:
Sex at Forty-Five by rob mclennan is a Blasted Tree original poem
Edition of 50 leaflets published in Canada