Hothouse

By Wynn Wilkinson

Let me clarify what I mean. 

When You bite the grapefruit and juice runs down Your chin, 

And You offer me the sweetest slice and I decline. 

When You walk lockarmed through bitter freeze 

And test the Northmost corner, of which You’d been warned 

And You promise lahat chereb still cracks and burns. 

The tonic tastes better on Your side of the bed, 

Or so I imagine, ill on the damp tile floor 

From which I beg unto dust shalt thou return 

Or the restaurant foyer slick with glass and ice 

Wherein You wink the last shall be first, 

And I beam, and the first last. 

This is all to say 

It’s the eyes which house the seven thousand mysteries 

Which glint like gold in the glutton’s gaze 

And the heart which discloses the twenty thousand truths 

Which shimmer like water in the Spring of Thirsty Friends 

And I, God forbid, have stumbled in mines dark and dim 

And have tasted liquid fire, and made out— consume! 

The consumptive and prince share a trivial glance 

And regret not bathing in each other’s arteries

Sucking pulp from that fruit of countless glowing truths 

Plucked so uncontroversially from Your Garden 

And offered with a holy is the Lord of hosts 

Then rescinded when the morions of conquest emerged. 

Now I see fountains hidden from sight; 

Now I see oases reveal what is plain 

And I loathe— much too late— those high archetypes 

For the stomach is full of long-hardened gold 

Which water many never quench nor erode 

Those oases and fountains alike are divulged 

To the truth-seeking ships without trespassing souls. 

And maybe I’ve got a little more to say to You now, 

And maybe I reminisce on that stage of nudation 

After the earthquake but before the disease 

Those parched cracks in Your skin spreading to mine 

Animals devoured in Your wounds, braying in fear 

Then crossing over to graze on my meadow’s marrow. 

What haunted visions did You witness, sheltering 

Cottonmouthed under chandeliers or open sky, 

Eyes sputtering with seismic synesthesia, 

Mind racked by muttered thou shalt surely die 

Which pierced Your chamber door

And reached us way down at the Tree of Life. 

Tomorrow, I’ll chant holies, and glimpse Your cracked lips 

Grapefruit-ridden rouge, pacifist, honest, away. 

Today, I bring clarification, and offer up 

A glint of gold, mined from my stomach, then moored in my eyes— 

You’ll agree it looks better in Yours.