Triangulation
       

With salmon stacked to the door, she squishes through fish,
boots tracking scales in the wheelhouse, across the galley floor,
down the companionway, and into the engine room.
By the end of the day, scales on the starboard fuel tank,
scales on the mast, deck winch, ladder and steps. Scales
in her hair, in her gloves, up her sleeves, behind her ears.
Scales like freckles. Scales like raindrops. Like bindis,
like dragon skin. Scales in her eyes like contact lenses. Scales
flake. Scales stick fast as glue. Scales flash like diamond chips,
like glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. Fairy dust your first
girlfriend wore on the last day of school. Piñata candy licked
with rust-colored tongues. Scales that taste like caviar,
like salt, like sperm, musty crush of ocean and stink oflust.
These scales. You lucky bastard, you don't even know,
but for each she scrubs and scrapes and cleans away,
she dreams your fingers drumming softly on her skin.
In the shower, she dreams your fingers into streams,
into stars that see, into mist, smoke, fire that breathes.
Your fingers hum whole notes on the bass clef of her back
or sweep window-lips in warm breeze or win fast bets
in a hailstorm of desire. Those fingers smell like diesel,
like danger, like a damp, darling copy of her body. They chart
scars like ocean trenches, flit on her wrist as a seabird skims sky.
They snap buttons on a birthday suit, crank the wrong wrench,
the right wrench, and a screwdriver that turns everything
loose. Fingers like ants, the crumbs they hunt, and sugar
they love. Fingers round as butter, as cream, as you ~cream
into a cornfield from a car full of flesh. She dreams your fingers
on fleece, on flannel, on copper, on cotton, on nipples,
on knees. How can I compare? I love her the way a king's
black mouth gapes for air, the way any salmon will taste
the whole ocean and still turn for home.

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Copyright © 2018 Sierra Golden All rights reserved
from The Slow Art
Bear Star Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission