print previewback DOROTHY CHAN
Composition
1
He loses his balance at Composition VIII.
We’re looking at Kandinsky—the “vibrations in the soul,”
the way all things move to the center, a projection of circles
towards the motion of us falling when he asks if I like kisses.
I want more kisses—I fall off the mattress, yet still
balanced with him—on point with the way his skin comes out
at night. Give me a Mahler symphony, Death in Venice
minus the tragedy—isn’t it the brink of apocalypse when I’m with you—
the way your eyes sharpen into me, into us, wanting every crevice.
Make it adagio in Composition VII, The Garden of Love in holy
explosion, as in Fernande by Picasso, those brushstrokes—
each nuanced layer revealing another nuanced layer
of touch, of trace, of the most ineffable version of love,
adoration, and then set Olivier
free as a bird, his hands on her forehead
rubbing in deeper and upwards into ridges, showing fingerprints—
because we always need a trace of a lover on us.