Howard Firkin
She lets me touch her honey skin. She calls
it I contact. I call it heroin.
The bathroom basin’s full of soaking smalls,
as slippery as veins. I zero in,
and this is what I call success: success.
Her words are soft as floorboards on my spine,
unhinged as kitchen cupboards, wild as soap;
each touch a splintered sharp of Baltic pine,
each kiss the warm, wet, breathlessness of dope.
She says, "Two noes can make a kind of yes."

She lets me touch her. I contact, she calls it.
Her words are warm as something warm. I zero.
The cupboards, doors, the floorboards, walls, a bit
of something warm. A kind of yes. Eyes zero.