The Swimming Partners

i

The oil slick of her bathing suit
polluted the pool with desires I fought
all day to wash out in the distant lake.
Sun sliced her body to pink and black
shapes: mermaid, eel and bleeding steak
tartare. She twiddled a clinging bit
of slack out tight around her butt.
I dove in, dreading a mistake
in my drawstring knot. I moved by, deep
in a drowned, parched silence, erection trapped
at the top of billowing trunks, felt the sight
of cool flesh under her heavy shirt
buoyed up by the natural lightness of fat
in the dense element of my heart.

ii

The lifeguard rescued her from my thirst
without knowing it. She was never afraid,
though I pumped the pool full of piss and remorse
where a long tide thumped and her body rode.
Somehow an innocent summer passed,
and we stopped swimming together for good.



Green Fuel

You hiss and spit like a fire that starts
reluctantly, but will not go out—
a vague, green fuel for the flames of lust
to lick and crumble, but never ignite.

You only warmed one limb at a time;
the skin that faced away from you sang
with tingling chills. There were always embers
hidden away, some shivering tinder
trapped, immune from tenderness.

But now your stripped flesh kindles fast,
consumes itself completely; kissed
but once with warmth, exhales, says yes-
terday was but ashes.
This new love
has set you flickering to dissolve,
like wood sufficiently mature
to incandesce, and disappear.


Bradley Buchanan's poetry and essays have appeared in more than 130 journals worldwide, among them Canadian Literature, Fulcrum, Twentieth Century Literature, Grain, and the Journal of Modern Literature. He is a board member of the Sacramento Poetry Center, where he edits the Tule Review. He also runs a new operation called Roan Press, Sacramento’s Small Literary Publisher (website www.roanpress.com), which will publish works from Northern California and beyond.