Streaking
She wants him inside her before weighing anchor,
certain Neptune will rise, enraged and hungry,
out of those black Jersey seas
to swallow them whole on this long night run
from Manasquan to Atlantic City.
She pulls him into her hard--wild animals rutting
in this coffin-like cabin, feet kicking yes
to the seawater slosh outside.
They stopped making love months ago.
Now they just use each other's bodies
to unleash their fears.
Red clouds bleed into a blind man's sky
when they finally set sail toward the wrecks
of Perkins and McAllister, to Dead Man's Reef,
where the bones of ancient mariners still rattle.
Surreal lights on the distant shore glow
as people come and go to K-Mart or McDonalds,
normal people with TV's in their dens,
kids holding their hands.
The cowardly moon blinks, drops out of sight
and Neptune appears in the rising winds.
He growls at his fleeing prey,
hurls spume at their boat,
denuded quickly to storm jib and hope.
Each time she clamps her lifeline to the wet
bucking deck she dreams herself someplace safe,
safe in the arms of a man with thick legs and big hands,
a man who wants solid ground beneath his feet, but
she knows that her siren sisters who called her
on other nights and who called her tonight,
won't easily release her, so strong
are the sea-borne threads between them.
She slip-climbs back to her lover's lap,
lets him fill her again as they
surf down the screaming seas,
arm braced beside his at the tiller.
She pretends he's an angel washed up over the railing,
his mouth rimmed with magic, his semen luminescent.
Pris Campbell
©2007
revised 2008
Published: Empowerment4Women 2009
Art: Lantern Boat by Redon
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