Christie Towers: Say Nothing
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
She Asks What I Think of Him
after Sappho's Fragment 31
When she asks what I think of him I think
I have no chance. All night, I watch them
together, not yet lovers, her mouth close
on his ear. And he is pretty, like a girl,
and I think he is like me, but different,
lucky, maybe, with a boyishness even
can admire. An easy way of standing.
And later, in the car, she is singing,
teasing, and I can say nothing, my heart
unspooling just to look at her, voice lost
in the open field of my chest. And when,
at the stoplight, she leans toward me, asking,
again, what's made me so quiet, her breath
like a knife dragged slow on my skin,
I wince at the terror of wanting her
and say nothing, nothing,
Imagining St. Augustine and Alypius in Florida
Augustine has a friend who wants to keep him
from marrying, says if he married it would be
impossible for us to have the untroubled leisure
in which we could live together in the love
of wisdom. The love of his friend seems to
knock against a wound. He says I dragged
my chain about with me, dreading the idea
of it being loosed. I drop my book and Google
St. Augustine gay and find all the hotel bars of Florida
where he and his friend could stay. Ignore Augustine’s
insistence that he could not live a single life—not yet—
in love with wisdom, that his flesh was bound to the desires
of his body, that is, his desire for a wife—I think
poor Alypius wonder if the ax that threatened him
one day in Rome was a gay-bashing ax, a celibacy tax,
wonder if he could have found fleshy love at the Boot Rack
Saloon or some other dark room in Florida.
Falling Rock
Maybe this ends with one of us shouldering
pavement – deer in the road, dodging headlights.
There are rocks falling for a few miles now,
but we’re going slow, taking turns with the radio.
I need a sad song, all the rivers of Ohio, the blur
of a late-setting sun, smoke through the slant
of an open window. I tell my friend about a dream.
You wearing yellow and I had to keep pulling
my dress down between my knees. You hand
me an empty jar and we watch as it fills again.
Radio Silence
There might be deer here. One leaps in silhouette
from its faded day-glo atmosphere. Yellow, sulfuric,
not sun, the other-world of animals. I take a picture
of the sky. I want you to know that I’m thinking of you.
Even when the clouds are no longer imposing, are miles
behind us now, gathering on the hill we called mountain.
I am longing for the radio, but the air comes up empty.
Not even the word of God can reach us. Not even the deer.
Good Friday
In the guttering light I see her heart
heaved into her throat as we kneel between
the aching pews, our knees bruised with suffering.
We came to celebrate the body, how we hunger
to be holy, and I think of her hand inside of me,
the crest of her flesh flushed and blushing, how we
took turns receiving the blessing of these, our bodies,
unburdened. And here, in the chill and dark
of early spring, we pray that In the shadow
of His hand He has hidden Me from small town
discovery, that the blood that fills our cup
will be enough, that we will emerge from this
night no longer thirsting.
These poems originally appeared in our ebook The Queer Body.
Christie Towers is a queer poet and educator living in the Boston area. Her work can be found in Narrative, Nimrod, Reality Hands, Belle Ombre, Bodega, SummerStock Journal and others.
