ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Ira Sukrungruang is the author of the memoirs Southside Buddhist and Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy, the short story collection The Melting Season, and the poetry collection In Thailand It Is Night. He is the recipient of the 2015 American Book Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature, an Arts and Letters Fellowship, and the Emerging Writer Fellowship. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including Post Road, The Sun, and Creative Nonfiction. He is one of the founding editors of Sweet: A Literary Confection, and teaches in the MFA program at University of South Florida.
Also by Ira Sukrungruang:
The Melting Season
Southside Buddhist
Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy
In Thailand It Is Night
July 20, 2016
The Lusciousness
1.
Sensate: you are alive, every pore
opened, the moment you plummet.
Not a free fall, but elation, anticipation,
like a ball in a boy's hand about to bounce.
2.
So I take you in, my love, the sight of you, the whole
of you, like a dare boys do, shoving sweet donuts
in the hollow of our mouths, fighting the taut urge
to choke, swallowing a little
at a time, savoring sweet lusciousness
that fills and spreads and satiates.
3.
How sight is taste and taste is touch, lips
lingering at the nape, fingers dancing
on the glide of a back. How fingers are eyes too,
tracing the contour of skin and sweat; and the tongue
another eye, licking the soft
behind the ear, down the musical chords
of the neck, the callused tips of guitar fingers,
to the undulations of the belly,
falling and falling,
further and further.
4.
And breath is song.
When I sang those young years
ago, my teacher told me to build breath
in the gut, fill the empty
of my belly with air and push forth word.
So yes, the breath and the moan and the gasp
and the shiver and the shudder. Love,
we are tuning forks ever trembling.
5.
This is not a love poem. It's bodies speaking.
It's entanglement.
Look at us.
From above, we take the shape of snakes. One eating
the other. Desire. Devouring.
This is vulnerability, the fragile
crisp of a fall leaf in a fisted hand.
"The Lusciousness" came about via a conversation with my then friend, now wife, about the difference between love and sex. The poem centers around the language of intimacy, the sensorial details that surrounds touch, the forgoing of thought and giving in to pleasure. It's not so much a love poem, but a lust poem, a desire poem. I couldn't help but have a bit of fun when writing it, the way the Romantics would begin to swoon over landscapes with exclamation marks. I was swooning over the landscapes of the body.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
