Sample Poems by Ginnah Howard

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Cache

Could I cache your kisses?
Run them stuff-jawed
to some dark stash. Braid blisses
of these cornucopian dawns
to hang vaulted in golden hoards.
Safe deposit certain smiles;
line them for winter
on warehouse walls?

How many seasoned,
how many green
cords of warmth would I need
to get through April's
final storms?

Secure from February snow,
I could be a prodigal spender;
what would I care of income, outgo?
Risk extravagance,
sipping these sweet liqueurs
to tipsy dance
till frogs, spring dervish.
Then peep out like crocus,
a winter stowaway impervious.

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Let's

dawdle the morning away.
Linger long in this dawn
cocoon,
speaking of nothing
linear beyond the Braille
of hips and ribs.

Let's hang out
and then lag down the long
cut,
zigzagging between points;
we'll meet the crow at the light
anyway.

Let's tarry at random
and then go in wild,
tardy.
Out of scope, out of sequence,
going round and round,
getting nowhere, but

Here.

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Flesh

Here’s to flesh:
silky flesh,
and, oh yes, bones;
3 cheers for ridges
hip and jaw.
Let’s celebrate
the clavicle and the patella;
all the spaces where
my fingers, toes, and tongue
dance upon the bony borders
of your body—
swirl and sweep and sway—
the tarantella and the minuet.

Here’s to the funny places:
to gnarled knees and hairy toes,
to nostrils and to knuckles.

To the Frog-King,
that sweet swaggerer
in all his phallic finery.
Bravo. Bravo.

Here’s to flesh:
haunch and shoulder, fat and brawn.
Hurrah to frail and fickle,
yielding flesh
and jutting bone.

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May

Your toes curled beneath
mine. Me, rumped into
the heat, that sweet crescent
of thigh, cock, and belly—
you. Your hands, your know-
by-heart fingers snugged into the furrows,
my flourishing folds. Yes, yes
and knees, elbows, thumbs—all
the lobes and pelted portals
coupling.

That, and yes, this first May poppy's
burst into scarlet guffaw (after weeks
of nodding tight-lipped hush.)
After inevitable March, May
and we are—praise the gods—
budding, bursting, juicy
again.