Amber Dawn
I watched your breast which was fuller than
the night on my porch when I first undid
your buttons. The sheet beneath you was green
It was almost our anniversary
–“Epiphyte 2: Moss,” Jane Eaton Hamilton
I watch your breast which is fuller than
when we met I thought you were starving
rawboned butch lap like a wooden chair
I vowed to feed you
everything I had tender a feast
charm your tongue
with salted green peas drunken apricots
sweet sun tea gradually
your ribs sank into waxing flesh
I’d come to know like my own
the night on the porch when I first undid
the milkmaid braid from my hair
my temples daubed with rose oil baby
powdered scalp elder cedar crooning
in the yard early peonies olfactory romance
June’s warm spell an invitation
to strip down are undressed bodies always
allegory? our love made us fabulists
we tell our story and tell it again
when I tug your shirt sleeve open
your buttons. The sheet beneath you is green
buffalo plaid banked by patchwork quilts
this is our December bed
the yarn of our winters
frost hugs the window
we wear gooseflesh yawning skin
you sing “Frosty le bonhomme” and my heart
becomes a snow globe each glittering
snowflake chimes, “I`m yours
I`m yours I`m yours”
it is almost our anniversary
when northern flickers hammer our roof
in the morning magnolia buds split
their pink lips I lick
the same raindrop off the tip
of your nose as I’ve licked
for the last six springs
it still tastes like a vow but today
I will write a poem
to mark the occasion
Amber Dawn is a writer living on unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (incorporated Vancouver, Canada). Her memoir, How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir, won the 2013 Vancouver Book Award. She is the author of the Lambda Award-winning novel Sub Rosa, and editor of the anthologies Fist of the Spider Women: Fear and Queer Desire and With A Rough Tongue. Amber Dawn was 2012 winner of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT writers. She currently teaches creative writing at Douglas College and the University of British Columbia, as well as volunteer mentors at several community-driven art and healing spaces. “Together Six” will appear in her forthcoming poetry collection, Where the Words End And My Body Begins.
I love this play with words, newly discovered invigorations in be tween