Zola Gonzalez- Macarambon- Two Poems

Short bio: Zola is a writer from the Philippines now living in Australia. She has poems published in several print and online publications, some of which can be read in her website: www.zolagonzalezmacarambon.weebly.com.

THE KISS AS THE WORD

‘’inhabit’’ fills the mouth

with a thickness

of tongue rolling out to a point

behind a wall of teeth

to be freed at last as a gasp, if only

for a moment as it catches behind a lip,

where it’s folded in, calm, familiar

like nature. Perhaps

when you spoke of love

you meant the habitability of all matter –

solid face, voice, vaporous body

held full, close, loose enough

to allow breathing.

LETTER TO BOYS, AGE 25

There were backseats and lamp lights
that only figured in youth. Wildly,
we shot through the dark, fast cars
on midnight highways in the failing light
of those summer days. We swatted reason
with our palms like bugs buzzing close to the ear.
The drinks closed in overhead, the hours
vibrated like high wire live and unannounced.
There were only the beach and the cliffs
and the open bush-lined road, the gut fire
doused by the wind while we hung on tight to the tops
of cars like luggage. We were weightless.

On slow days, you waited for me,
leaning gaunt and bent like an open nail on a dry wall,
soap and smoke the smell of your skin's breathing.
You were cool enough for tattoos,
you have pocket enough for beers,
a tongue ring, a cool shirt.
Sometimes, in the wake of longing,
in the minutes yawning toothless as cat mouths
I remember the green yard of a back porch,
the sky blurring heavy with stars.