Scrapbook

I’ve had a woman reach across the table, curl her
fingers snailishly under mine, look me in the eyes,
and mouth amidst the silver lull-and-surge of the loud

diner, I can’t wait to fuck you tonight, which she did,
teaching me a thing or two as she whispered there, there;
another night, I held another woman and heard

the great spit-curdled wallops of sob break out of her
as she anatomized the factors, down to the least,
which led to her two abortions, and I bit my tongue

until I felt a warm pinch of blood metal my mouth,
thinking that tiny ferric tinge would somehow stop me
from saying, now, now, there, there; and later, in silence,

I sat with the last one and did my finest, fiercest
impression of praying, singeing my small wants and gripes
into whatever pale celestial paper gets stuffed

down the neck of that intangible cosmic bottle
thrown oceanward, and I still hope, with my stony hope,
wherever such sad prayers go, they’re there; but none of these

felt nearly as intimate as sitting next to you
in front of a Crown Royal bag full of cut out scraps
with images—a backpack left at a bus station,

a tattoo of barbed wire ivying around her wrist,
one lost bee in a flowerless meadow—and a few
puckish instructions—buy a plane ticket to somewhere

you do not want to go, quote Emily Dickinson,
begin again—and drawing some half dozen of them
out of the bag so we could write poems together

in which, because we were convinced there might be
something salutary in the aleatory, we let
chance have its say. Chance said the taste of a lemon drop,

the scent of jasmine green tea, ghost fingers in my hair;
chance said this many years, that many years; chance said grant
me thy law graciously; chance said a slew of freckles,

a slight widening of the eyes, a scar on the bridge
of your nose; chance said on any given day, the red
Chevy Suburban of Fate can roar out of nowhere

and knock you into the afterlife; chance said give me
understanding, and I shall keep thy law, yea, I shall
observe it with my whole heart; chance said once, only once;

chance said In ša’ Allah; chance said the red Honda Civic
nicknamed Ananda shall carry all your happiness;
chance said so shall I keep thy law continually

for ever and ever; chance said church steps at midnight;
chance said taste of blood; chance said let down your lovely hair;
chance said please; chance said there, there. If we’re going to speak

Portuguese, let’s speak Portuguese. Saudade. Cafuné.
If we’re going to speak a language only we can
understand, let it tickle and pulse like a mouthful

of beautiful moths, let it smolder like a long shot
of well whisky, let it scale us from sacrum to skull
like the sound of a finger squeaking against a wet

pane of glass. As we sat writing in the blue silence
of thought, I knew that we were natives of neighboring
islands who spoke in a warm pidgin of salt and sand

and that I’d never been so close to someone not yet
naked. When you read me what you’d written, I believed
for the first time in empathy, in telepathy,

and in the suddenly precise loss I knew was now
pointed at me, steel tip shining and steady the hand
of whoever does the aiming. Chance said given time

and chance, there would be a you, a me, a city made
mostly of broken shells, and that we would find ourselves
there in a café where they brew it all cup by cup.

I’ll take the dark roast, I learned to say, I’ll take the dark.
What else have you taught me? To be reckless and to love
the swerve, to let articulate caterpillars built

of glass inch across my prismed skin, to pass my plate
across to you no matter what I’m eating, to watch
the world as much for the world it isn’t as for what

it is. What else have you taught me? Since we are mostly
minerals and water, we should remember even
rocks reach for each other in the dark. Don’t hesitate

to blowdart tapioca pearls toward the black river
or let a snail explore your knee. Wear a backless dress
and someone is going to touch your back, and sometimes

you’ll want him to. The heart lizardtails and starfishes.
Teach me again. The words crossed out might have been the words
you meant. Teach me again. When in doubt, go with Coltrane,

My Favorite Things, ’61, vinyl. Teach me again.
Sing as the boy does by the burying ground, afraid
but singing. Teach me your sexiest dialectic,

teach me the never-enough and the never-ending,
teach me counterpress and crush, teach me touch, teach me red,
teach me the last name you say before you fall asleep,

teach me what comes after the lesson where you teach me
an echo is when the world repeats back to you what
you just said as if to see if you’re still there. There. There.

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Stephen Kampa is the author of three collections of poetry: Cracks in the Invisible (2011), Bachelor Pad (2014), and Articulate as Rain (2018). He teaches at Flagler College.