"Intimacies"

[Here's the next of B.N.'s poems, which begins the second part of the manuscript]

Intimacies


Among the small gestures
of intimacy is
that of taking the hand
of a woman and saying:
He will come back.
Things turn—
from beautiful to ugly
funny to bitter.
Like this inside me
you know, what I believed
to be bright red is
pale pink.
I like speaking in
bird calls,
imitating the being of
any small thing.

B.N.
© to the author, 1983-2010