CHRIS KORNACKI
Photography ©2004 FRED ELLIS

postcard (leaving poem #1):
'i'm leaving'
are the words voiced in
your speechless kiss.
you thought i couldn't hear them,
though body language is my
native tongue. i might
have understood you sooner,
but i was too tangled up
in your eyelashes & perfume
to taste your longing. so,
tomorrow morning
i'll be left with your absence,
& the fallen feathers of your dark hair
adrift on the white bed sheets.

please,
send me a postcard wherever you go;
i'll be waiting like a pile of clay
for your hands.


for-- (leaving poem #2):
she tells me i'm no longer
a lover.
she says my mind's too slippery
to move her fingers across &
there's other men waiting
who'll cradle her constant
desperation
by letting her have all the power,
virgin-pure.
i tell her she's only beautiful
when i can't have her anyway;
that she's only beautiful
when her back is reflecting
in the mirror.
then I turn over and fall asleep
cradling my loss.


sex & politics (leaving poem #3):
after the sweat, the climax &
your departure, i sit by the
window smoking a slow cigarette

that chases rain-drops in the night.

the wind blows across my
thoughts trying to remove all
your traces, but

the essence of your woman-
hood is still streaked along my
face;

your scent clings to my body &
i can't wipe your scars off my
mouth.

(Cohen's slaves are better at this
than I am...)

it's not safe to mix sex &
politics
because you become
the tyrant & i
become the peasant longing

for your mercy,
& end up pulling a ray of
light from it's source, using it
to brand you in my

poems forever.


morning fog (leaving poem #4):
alone with my thoughts by the
river in the early morning
fog watching people pass by,
watching the seagulls beg
for food.

i slowly journey away
from the poem i meant to write
& move into the one about our
contract of flesh
signed in your
sweat
& my semen.

i want to leave that tortured
love room & your deep
brown eyes because
i'd feel guilty if i fell
in love.

but the pleasure captured in my
coffee cup & the days first
cigarette
relaxes the branches
of my arms
so they can just record this
moment-

...me sitting upside
down
in the early morning
fog
eating a butter tart
& licking the goo from
my fingers...

it's good to sit here writing
about nothing else but my
sitting here
& to just let the mist of
the morning
(not your shadow)
hang off my lips
& my pencil.