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Thousand-Year-Old Fiancée by Robert Sward We are alone, Death's thousand-year-old fiancee and I. The thing suggests itself to me. I step onto the front parts of her feet, and stand like that facing her saying nothing. In moments I lose twenty pounds and sweat. My nose bleeds. It occurs to me I may never before have acted out of instinct. We do not embrace. She is in her middle sixties, with varicose veins, whitish hair and buttocks as large as Russia. Things come off of her in waves, merriment, exuberance, benevolent body lice, hundred-year-old blackheads. I kiss her hives. I lick her nose that shows she drinks bottles and bottles of Fleischmann's every day. I am standing there in my Jewish hair facing her with my life. Knock, knock. It is Death in spats and a blue business suit. I stand there in my Jewish hair facing him. He is very still, grinning, grayish, bemused. Pretty soon I begin to scream. All night I scream. Yeah. After a while I go under and kiss her ass. It takes a bit. Fathers and sons, I am up to my knees in the moon. Kiss this ghost she says of a certain light. I plunge my tongue into it to the ears. Madam, I say, astounded, choking, feverish, I have not as yet had you. Have me, she says. Under my foreskin there is a star, whole constellations. Goddamnit, I am not speaking to you here of sex! Kiss me here, she says. Kiss me there. Stars, ghosts and sons, winged, we are all of us winged-- the one thing there is of us. Death, you old lecher, I affirm you, I confront you with my balls. I revere dead fish and sunken submarines, the little red schoolhouse and the American way. Let us in fact join hands with the universe. Death, I have news for you. I climb into your young fiancee eleven times a night. There are signs that she is pregnant. Death, there is nothing I will not love. (from Robert Sward's Collected Poems 1957-2004, due out next year from Black Moss Press) © Robert Sward P.S. There will be more from Robert in the next issue of Octavo. « Home | Contributor Notes » |
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