Our first night together, I pulled
you close by instinct, even
after you warned me, I run
hot—not metaphorically,
but metabolically. I recoiled
to recover, imagining sand
dunes migrating by millimeters
before a gust of dry air scrubbed
a layer of skin right off my face.
I haven’t slept in the Sahara, but
I have climbed a camel in Wadi Rum,
which is close—not geographically,
but spiritually—the way the church
adopted wild-eyed cave zealots
as staid saints with combed hair
in all their stained-glass windows.
But what a draw, this radiance,
this overclocked engine roaring
inside your chest—not mechanical,
but mitochondrial—prokaryotic
hitchhikers processing the ancient
scraps of stars, now, even as you sleep,
even as the too-loud fan fails to cool.
Tomorrow, I’ll run through trees
rooted in a dead volcano, the sting
of sunscreen in my eyes, maple
leaves striking my face
like some secret forest flagellant. But
first, I will revel in your density,
all your weight pressing on me—a stone
upon a heretic, grinning wide and defiant
before the pious onlookers.
–
Casey Schreiner has been a television writer / producer, author, journalist, and copywriter, and he has returned to poetry after a short twenty-year break. He studies poetry at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland, Oregon, and has been accepted into the Napa Valley and Bread Loaf Writers Conferences.