Two Poems

My First Lover Speaks to Me as I Sleep With Her

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_11/Raven1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

This is what it feels like to split the shell of a woman.
Shards of her everywhere. Animal light spread across

the walls. For a second, I feel like a boy entering
a woman for the first time. My skin shivering as if pulled

from the banks of a river. Clothes shapeless on the floor. When she moves
beneath me, I wonder how someone could enter her like a hook

thick as ropes. Tear her into two. And he comes to me as if I’ve closed my eyes.
The braided scar above his lip. The clench

of teeth on my ear. Like this, he says, showing me how to peel her back
like husks. Like this.

Anniston, Alabama, 1972

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_11/Raven2.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

You’ve done it again—looked at that light-skinned woman’s legs like bottles
full of whiskey. Put your hooked finger to her hair.
Percy, my hands are growing
wild. Yesterday, I slid a knife into grapefruit. Split it
into halves & found you sleep on the porch, your mouth
twitching, chin dark with juice. I unzipped
your pants, placed my hand inside. And you rose like a papaya
wet with spit inside my palm—
my left hand watching. Heavy with the glint
of a knife.