Issue 4 • Winter 2002 • Poetry

Embrace

Dallas Angguish

As I walk away from your embrace I feel the cold shadow of your pupils falling on the small of my back where I have that tattoo which is an emblem against you and you fire those daggers from your eyes which embed themselves like anchors under the skin of my shoulder-blades and hook me to you with long tethers that are desire not wanting to let go, that are thin streams of poison, and when, in the night as I try to arm myself against you by whispering the long and perfect names of all of my Buddhist saints, you slip your arm under my head like a pillow and your breath comes in close to me like a breeze which has on it all the saltiness of sex and the sea, just like when I was a child and I fell in love with the wind on the beach, but there are no starfish here, the only stars are the scars that pepper the cool leather of my chest which are the burns and pin-pricks of all the dark nights we spent together in cold water flats in cities like Paris and Sydney and Prague and New Orleans or in that truck-stop in nowhere Arizona under the cloudless night sky where I first saw the glimmer of your rolling tears when we first held hands, or in that ancient cemetery where we slept in a tomb like vampires and we kissed in the crypt long kisses of trembling discovery that warmed my body as if it had been dead for three thousand

years and was coming back to life, resurrected by the blood pounding at the corner of your lips, or when I shook with visions of eternity that came after you spoke those tender words of endearment to me which sounded exactly the same as birds singing in trees that stand against autumn skies in Istanbul that are the same blue of your eyes, your eyes that fire daggers which embed themselves like anchors under the skin of my shoulder-blades and hook me to you with long tethers that are desire not wanting to let go as I walk away from your embrace.

Dallas Angguish is a poet and writer based in Australia. He has been published in Australia, Asia, and the United States. He is currently writing a novel, For The Love Of Winter, expected to be completed by the end of 2005. His favourite animal is the wombat.

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