Blason; but hardly lovers; Conversation with the ride operator at the Screaming Eagle

By: Davis Einolf

Blason 

There has never been a woman like her,  hair so black obsidian conspires  with the janitor’s bucket of bleach  to reinvent itself as opal, if only  to avoid vain comparison.

There have never been eyes like hers,   so deep all the wishes thrown in them   still tumble past millionaires in submarines,  with tears that could flood the well of Urd  and drown the jealous Norns on its banks.

There has never been a smile like hers,  that sneaks past sclera and retina  to dance upon the hippocampus  or to the vagus nerve to induce  the vertigo that some men call love.

There have never been lips like hers,  that lip balm only touches to soothe  its own chapped existence, that inspire  bottles to increase viscosity  in favor of a prolonged kiss. 

There have never been breasts like hers  that chastely laugh at Everest;  whose angle and repose would leave  Edmund and Tenzing shivering  in the base camp, necks broke from looking up.

There have never been hands like hers,  that destroy a city with a wave,  that need no gloves in winter to keep warm  because a thousand rough palms  offer their have in return for hold. 

There have never been legs like hers,  that dangled off a pier could save all the sea’s drowned,  were they not ever out of reach;  that could bring Moses down off his mountain  to pray to golden calves. 

but hardly lovers

He said 'sh' with one h and she used four – the close thighs of ski pants versus the slow drag of a box across shag – but he told his friends she told him to shut up. They went together like meager and rations while they rumbled for double. Like hair and lice with only the occasional pubic. Like long and lost

Conversation with the ride operator at the Screaming Eagle

Pith I never claimed. Temerity I did once grasp in my hands, a baby bee which stung and with a yelp I shook it free. Audacity demanded a fiery roar but from me it was a sweet, soft hum less vomited from lungs weak from soft couches than gently let out to play. Spontaneity I mulled over and decided against. I am but the pale fundament of a human sentence; aporia in practice, the frail reed of a metaphor read in a teen novel; I am you rhymed with do and rhymed with you again. To name me epigon is too lofty of praise; I cannot be seen in the umbra of the great. Yet with this bounty of mediocrity from which to pick and choose you insult my physique? I – God’s worst written character, inchoate creation, defined by blank spaces not virtues or flaws – am excluded on account “Must be this tall to ride”?

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Davis Einolf is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars program and his poetry has been published in Chaleur Magazine. He lives in Portland, Oregon.