Sometimes I Am Too Impatient for Poetry and Also for Sex

J. Bailey Hutchinson

which isn’t to say I’d call a bundle of floss-knotted kindling what needs
retrieval from beneath the house just that it takes a long time to untie
anything with teeth and I am a busy woman my friend says what
she likes most is the afterward the peeling apart like a label
lifted from a jam jar but given the empty guest room its sun-
warmed daybed I often think there are thirteen nails to be
plucked from the porch presently given the woeful
glance at my drinking lip I think I have not read
as many books as is expected of my profession
when a lover wants to court the mango shape
of my breast I think well sure but and some-
times beneath a waistband all I smell
is boiled water in a mouth all I taste
is mouth is it that the bradford pear
stinks like someone spent or is it
that we want too much to taste
in every jut and shudder a
thousand fragrant flower-
ings I read online that
fruit doesn’t sweeten
only loses acid as if
a bowl of mulling
peaches learnt
sugar at birth
as if it doesn’t
gather but
gives
up—
Love,
it is not
that I do not like
it. It is only that I forget
I deserve the time. Slow. Touch.
I am coming around to it. This poem
is as good a start as any. Read it. With me.
In the bed. I will. With you. Become a sugaring team of insides.