​?
 
I can’t stop lingering
along those curves, the sexy
esoteric way she teeters
 
on that dot, how she rises
from the basket, a cobra
unfazed by my pungi’s
 
charm. A Matisse odalisque,
she teases. No one else
dives with half a parachute,
 
alights in backless dress.
All I ask is to unhook
that strap, let fabric pool 
 
until it’s just her pearl:
small, round, certain
as it’s possible to be.


Published in Southern Poetry Review and Six Portraits