by I.S. Jones
There鈥檚 a sweetness to these nights of surrender.
It鈥檚 true, the heart beats two rhythms: one for me, then you.
I emerge from the shower, drip on Momma鈥檚 good floor,
trail a gown of water towards your door.
Down the hall, you stretch in your skin, I saunter in mine.
I tried before to rest but my jaw aches from grinding teeth,
so, I kneel at your altar. I watch you touch yourself
through a blade of light leaking into the hallway.
Earlier, we went to the river if only to relieve
the body of the sun鈥檚 tirade. I didn鈥檛 mean to see at first:
you slip out of your blue bathing suit, step into the water. Blue promise
memorizing the muscles of your back. I鈥檓 old enough to understand
too much longing can make any creature feral. My problem
is that I fall in love with beauty. You are the grape going into my mouth,
the lone tear of riverwater tracing my breast. I鈥檝e spent my small life
as two bodies yearning to be one. I want to know how it felt
the first time you discovered God鈥檚 eye blooming between your legs.
A flowering of dark red poppies in a field. What pleasure possesses you,
sister, I want for myself. In this night, everything is about the moon鈥�
even her absence, even you. Eventually, someone wants something,
that鈥檚 the nature of power. O patient light, grant me passage. I want
no beast but the night to hear me. Your soft, indelible labor,
fingers roving the field until you shutter into a gilded song. I long to kiss
the hands of this submission. I dream we crash into each other:
cainabel cainabel cainabel. That even when you catch me
and close the door, I fever for the taste of you. I said I have a problem
I didn鈥檛 say I wanted to be saved.
So much of what makes myth-making delightful is the space into a story from a more nuanced lens. In my writing, I find myself captivated by girlhood and those 鈥渇irsts鈥� (that sometimes, but don鈥檛 always, mark the end of girlhood): first secrets, first lie, first touch of shame, first pleasure. 鈥淵ou are the grape going into my mouth, the lone tear of river water tracing my breast鈥� were the first lines of the poem before I fully knew its shape. They recall Cain watching Abel as she takes off her bathing suit and skinny dips in the water.
I am curious about a feminine gaze, yes, but specifically Cain鈥檚 as a young girl who discovers her younger sister masturbating while spying on her鈥攕imultaneously 鈥渏oining鈥� her younger sister. What Cain understands about pleasure is inexplicably tied to power. Touching the hem of taboo without lifting its blouse, 鈥淲e Are Soft Between Hours鈥� is a window into one sister who can鈥檛 tell her body or pleasure from another sister. One name erodes into another. And there鈥檚 an Isaiah Rashad reference sprinkled in somewhere.
听is an American / Nigerian poet, essayist and former music journalist. She is a Graduate Fellow with The Watering Hole and holds fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT Writer鈥檚 Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in听Guernica,听Washington Square Review,听Hayden鈥檚 Ferry Review,听LA Review of Books,听The Rumpus,听The Offing, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in Poetry at UW鈥揗adison where she was the inaugural 2019颅颅鈥�2020 Kemper K. Knapp University Fellowship and is the 2021-2022 Hoffman Hall Emerging Artist Fellowship recipient. She is the Director of the Watershed Reading Series with Art + Literature Laboratory as well as the editor-in-chief of听. Her chapbook听听is out with Newfound.