Contributor: John Tustin

- -
If you were next to me
Now
I would be crying and smiling
Softly sobbing
With the surrender of missed chances
And the validation
That beyond tomorrow
Lies the future

The future of your hands
In the graying coarseness of my
Hair
Stroking my slowing body
Back to quickness

Your lips on the edge of my ear
Voice subtle in the dark
Of the night
Of my heart

We would come to the bed
And stare face to face
The brilliant coal of your eyes
Becoming diamonds

As I hold my breath
And fall in love with you
In the renewed faith
Of our shared space
Among the falling
And the fallen
And the attempting
To rise again


- - -

Contributor: John Tustin

- -
I hold your toes,
Kiss them in the dark.
Every part of you is so pretty,
Even the sadness in your heart is beautiful.
I run my hand along your leg, your thigh,
Then my palm touches your palm.
We remain there:
Your big toe (so small) pressed to my lips
As you hold my thigh in your left hand,
Folding our right hands together.
I love your parts,
I love your whole,
I kiss the sole of your foot
As you wrap your legs around me
And we hold the moment still,
Perfect, glorious
Like a hummingbird
In midflight.


- - -

Contributor: John Tustin

- -
I beg the stars
for one night with you.

I beg the sun
for a single day.

I beg the clouds
to cover for us.

I beg the ground
to bury us side by side.

I beg the wind
to carry us toward the other.

I have spent my life
collecting debris,
ensnared in webs,
vigilantly destroying myself.

I would swim the ocean naked for you.

I would dance through the fire for you.

I would bind you with my misanthropic and perfect love.

I would give up years for you.

I would give up music.

I would give up concentrated thought.

I would give up dreams and concepts
and computation and analyzation.

I would even give up
these words
and
all the others
not yet
hammered
to a page.


- - -

Contributor: John Tustin

- -
i am compelled to find you.
i am compelled to arrive
and fling myself at your feet.
i am compelled to find your body
like a moth finds light;
like a worm finds darkness;
like a slug finds wetness;
like hatching sea turtles strive toward the ocean.
i am compelled to touch your outstretched body
and taste your body.
your body as brave and delicate
as a laden branch.
your nipples that stand like autumn
and applaud for me
as my flesh screams in torrid agony,
your mouth that lies agile and tastes
like sugar and peaches.
your eyes that implore me and explore me
and reveal me.
your legs that wind their way up my back
and attach like vines on the church wall.
your eyes that betray tandem supplication and defiance.
i am compelled to hold tight your wrists
and thrust my force, my weight, my self
on you and in you
and we scuffle like that,
attached at the thigh and waist,
sticky and dripping,
eyes interlocking,
and my waist will never leave your thigh.
my perspiration is for you, my climax is for you,
my tears and my open kisses,
my love and my fleas and my sad abandoned chrysalis,
my jail cell and my damp wilting flowers,
their petals falling and glistening for you.
and i am for you, my eyes are for you,
and i am for you, compelled onward by foolishness
and kismet.
i am compelled to find your body,
explore it and adore it,
anoint it and adorn it,
obtain it and contain it,
and put myself into you
and pull myself out
feeling better,
being better,
compelled to do it
until i can’t do anything anymore.
until i can’t do anything
but lie fragile in your arms
and wait for my own body to succumb to a heaven that will not compare
to the feeling in my stomach when you approach,
the fullness of my heart when you are there,
the emptiness of my heart when you are not.
compelled to lie there
until i admit that the earth is just some
blue and green and brown thing
that God put down
so you had a place
to be.
and i am here
to be
with you
so you will not
be alone there.


- - -

Contributor: John Tustin

- -
I dream of sitting at a surfside restaurant
eating lunch across from you,
your body rising like steam
before my unfolding eyes
and you excuse yourself to use the bathroom
and my mind exclaims,
“she’s mine,
and I belong to her.”

But then it occurs to me
in a thought like an exploding star
that maybe you won’t return,
maybe you’ll never come back
and I shift in my seat,
groaning and flaking like a rusty hinge,
grieved like a dog waiting for his mistress.
And I don’t touch my food
and my eyes try not to go toward the bathroom
but there they go
and they begin to fold
and then I wake up

and I’m still
still waiting.


- - -

Contributor: John Tustin

- -
Why have you disappeared from my heart?
I ache like a lion staring from the iron bars
of a solitude that only a prisoner can fathom.

The shakiness, the weariness comes again
on the tremulous wings of excess thought.
I am truly alone tonight.
Words do not comfort me,
fantasies beckon
but are pushed aside.
It’s you, it’s you
that I need, that I lust,
that haunts me and grips my powdering bones.
And it’s you that chains me.

I am held captive by you
and you are not even present
in this room or my conversations
with raspy loveless walls.
I am a prisoner of that unknown thing
that draws us together
and the known things that hold us fast
and apart.

A prisoner that begs not
for food, for water, for comfort,
or even for dignity.
I am hungry only for freedom
and for you,
insatiable for you, madly
insatiable for you –
your mouth, your body,
the words I imagine coming from them.

And now you hold back,
you hold it in –
or maybe you don’t feel it anymore.
That feeling for me that I know
must be a mistake, a crossed wire,
a crooked beam in your mind
that would make you think
I deserve your heart.

I love you like I did,
like I do, like I always will
and that love is a tether
around my arms and my waist
and it holds me still
and keeps me from going
forward or backward -
and the lacking of your words,
the void of your apparition,
they are the wire
that pins back the wings
of this jailbird.

Speak.
Speak and the wire will break
and my wings will open
and I’m sure they’re quite beautiful
when open

although I’ve never
seen it.


- - -

Contributors: Kim Long and John Tustin

- -
I was in the sun for a moment:
I sprang from the nowhere
Of empty lots and refuse:
Warm and golden,
A bumblebee tickled me:
Taking what he wanted
But teaching me to feel.

And then you stopped to admire me,
Taking me in with all senses.
I was fresh and new for a short while,
The spring and I.
And I was beautiful,
You told me so
And in that moment
I knew it to be true.
You called me daffodil.

Your praise watered me
And folded around my roots.
I shimmered and trembled
Under your touch.

But you carried away the soil
Of my scent with you:
You were nothing but the wind
When you claimed to be the earth
Beneath me.

I die so soon,
Before even the tegument of summer sun.
I am perennial
But I need more to be reborn
Than a flattering wind
That doesn’t bother
To take a piece of me with him
When he shifts attention
Toward another sky,
Only the scar you inflicted
Upon my memory
To remain.


- - -
Kim Long is previously unpublished and lives in Florida with her husband and son. John Tustin's poetry has been published in many disparate literary journals and he is divorced with two wonderful children. This is Kim and John's first collaboration.