What’s Ours
it may be that a long time ago, as a baby, we chose the way we tasted sugar felt cotton and heard Bessie Smith at 3 a.m. in the back of a dream sitting at a table below a yellow lamp. we blinked our eyes then had to live between those soft parentheses drinking wine or tearing at someone’s heart and nightly laying our bodies down to see a piece surrendered that made us sane, made us hunger for the span of some girl’s back peering behind her, humming a chorus. there are hues of light we’ll never see, too subtle the taste of pepper. but maybe if we rest tonight say these names, feel their weight, as your thigh touches my thigh we can drink that blood, taste that pepper and sing Bessie Smith like no one can lying together in the burning, lovely night. David Waite is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts program from Goddard College where he studied under the poet Beatrix Gates. He has poems forthcoming in Greensilk Journal and Children, Churches and Daddies and published articles on creative writing for the website Poet’s Ink. He is currently the assistant editor for Poet’s Ink Review and a writing professor in the Syracuse, NY, area.