Hannah Karpinski
OUT ON THE TARMAC IN KRAKÓW
I want to write it all Maara
Write down all the looks and transmute
The semantic venom, how it oozed
Out the mouths of my own blood
And puddled in ditches around godly small towns
But we’re not sleeping in this country tonight
And the aura of departure
Is already descending
Your bright face backlit
By shrieking reds and golds
Louder than any fear
Of plunging back to Earth, screaming
The whole way down
I yield to the passage
Knowing we are bound
For a place where we can feel
The sea, large and dark
Rolling in over the sand
Even when we can’t see it
Where the fish jump out of the water
And straight into our mouths
As gulls call overhead
With an inflection I only recognize
From the movies
Where sunward backs swallow
Tattoos of bleeding insignia:
Lineage dilating in leathery flesh
Even your worst secrets are plump
Like fresh peach and just as sweet
When the view is you and the water
Hold up everything you know
To the edge of my perception
And tell me one true thing at a time
Until I can’t make out the borders, can’t tell
The sea from the oily sky
The gulls from the girls
On the shore, my legs from yours as we lie
Tangled and sandy on the damp towel
Rolling to dodge the cicadas as they plummet
From the stilt-high pineto, screaming
The whole way down
I could kiss you out here on the tarmac
Where we can laugh because we can leave
And our secrets are still our own
Where we don’t belong to anyplace
And no one can follow us home