Main Entry: sot·to vo·ce

Pronunciation: "sä-tO-'vO-chE
Function: adverb or adjective
Etymology: Italian sottovoce, literally, under the voice
1 : under the breath : in an undertone; also : in a private manner
2 : very softly -- used as a direction in music

Thursday, September 01, 2005

recollections of you

The tap pants you bought me
The bra with the apricot ribbon
I found in the monoprix in the 19th
and the flowers you bought for no reason
before we went foraging for dinner, returning
home rich with thick clumps of vegetable
radishes, cabbage, carrots, our rich spring onions
a garden of lettuce, tomatoes
the roots still clutching and from each would fall
handfuls of dirt, of this French soil.
I could smell it.
The earth redolent and lovely
as our days in the country
and the photograph of you
snapped at Baudelaire’s tomb;
how you rested, so casual and,
so easily comfortable, already no
stranger in this thick foreign land
but a citizen, like me, European
so easily loose-limbed and elegant
in that way that only the romantic
can afford. The look in the eye,
the present pursed pout, how we stand
hips thrust forward as if made for the fucking -
for true and real kissing on the parched
peck of America . This is why:
I love you. One reason, yes:
but it makes us kindred
woven of same fabric
our silks so easily intermingling
how we lie down together
how we pull the shutter
how we shut out the world,
& how we open ourselves.