Sanctificum

from “Elephants”

1

There was this small college in the South where I read
and three white boys in the audience
in KKK outfits, stiff like lilies for a funeral.
The walk up to them was long with fear and shame and rage.
But I took the hood off one and wore it back to the stage
and through my reading to a deafening applause.
But I mostly remember how hot it was under the fabric
and how that boy’s smell filled me,
and how wet my tears were.
And Bean in the warm bed breathing softly and me cold
on the floor and writing this poem in an old notebook.
And the arrow slit of skylight lets in only a red night.
And her Gennady Aygi translations flutter by the bed
like a flock of simple white birds.
The more we promise to never leave our lovers,
the faster the horizon arrives. My lust is simpler still:
that Bean return to me every night with her gentle warmth.