Let’s try this again.
I may not be the hottest dude in the shtetl
but I am definitely the warmest.
O velvet furnace. Supple egg—your yolk, the sun.
My ancestors subsisted on bread & cheese & potatoes,
they struggled through long Russian winters,
what did I expect?
Such a gift you would have been. Imagine
how they would long for you, your
generous heat, generous. A child sitting on my lap,
giggling, eating plums in the snow.
O great pale plum. Plush crystal ball.
I lay in bed & stroke you & your stretch marks
show me all that is to come & I forget
what it is, busy as I am
loving you, loving you, loving you—
my soft ballooning jewel, my fruit-packed
paunch. Today the market received the nectarines,
at last—I placed them into a bag & brought them
home, & you were happy. Now I want
to make love & soon, perhaps, I will, & I will
do it my way, which is a listening—o ear,
swollen ear, swollen with music. Whale who eats
exclusively operas. Forgive me—
I’ve gotten, indeed, too big for my britches, my bones
your chariot—good czar, make your decrees
& I will obey. O bold loafy roundness. Old country
cabinet. You were made perfect for something. Southern
California was an unforeseeable circumstance, darling,
it’s not your fault a diaspora outpaces evolution.
Someday we will return to the cold. You deserve it,
carrying, as you do, a nation, carrying, as you do,
the memories of a people
& what they longed for. Summer
held all winter long in folds of flesh.
A lucky love, in want of warmth,
bent, o blessing, against you.
Jeremy Radin is a poet, actor, and teacher. His poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Ploughshares, The Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Hunger Mountain, The Journal, MUZZLE, Passages North, and elsewhere. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Slow Dance with Sasquatch (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012) and Dear Sal (not a cult press, 2017). He lives in Los Angeles where he once sat next to Carly Rae Jepsen in a restaurant. Follow him @germyradin
Photo by Natalia Medd on Foter.com / CC BY