Our Embrace
by John Barton
Sex without kissing is all
about form, lips opened
for breath only, the unnamed
torso heraldic, the pierced
right nipple a medal of valour
untarnished by the tongue
face turned away as hands
work past hips, tattooed
skin of parted inner
thighs and buttocks a raised
map without relief of whose
sensate territory no one
can liberate, scrotum fanned
out above the perineum under
the about-to-flare lightning
head of a cobra, with no
lines to withdraw
behind, no matter how
deeply any are
hilted, pale conscripts
eyes closed or blank. |
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