Us, Again in Arches

by JAI HAMID BASHIR

Intimacy is a quiet knowledge arriving 
from Latin for within. Drinking lungfuls 
of cold air, one moonlit cuticle entering 
pockets of a lover who doesn’t let go. Illuminated 

buzzing nightlight in the shape of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. 
Yellowed nimbus coos sweet honey feathers into the room.
The last pantera in the Great Basin stretched 
in the cavities of trees. How fetal the ring of this toothed purr. 

The spirit is here. Pure las formas of divinity so far 
con curl of the pony’s neck in caballito de mar. 
The sacred is here. Relics from besos infinitos 
tentwarm with our bodies in Arches National Park. 

Such slowed interia. Loops of lungs lift like balloons 
on ripenings of ribbed Yucca. Alveoli por el cielo 
from cool washed ceramic. Inside the house, bouquets
of cutlery sleep in tablecloths folded by your mother. 

Before leaving, pouches of water lay like slack organs,
mouthpieces sweetserpent around bowls of oranges. 
Freckles in eyes undulate: furling flags on a windy day,
unpatriotic color refugees from neither border.

Word for table is mesa/mez in Spanish/ Hindi. 
In stilled motions of sandstone, reach out. 
Ajo. Pull me onto red rock. The vista is alien.
Ajo. Submerge deeper into our own quiet topography. 

Red psalm sweetness spiralcalm of a stove. 
Vamos. Walk with me into borderlessness. 
Walk with me into the kiln of intimacy. 
Vamos. Walk with me into this within. 

All we know and could be is in this clay.