Poem by Anna Morrison in Shampoo Issue 37

i will place my salty fingers to her punctures my mouth will coax a moaning note through the want in her rustic throat

i will place my salty fingers to her punctures if she will be the instrument

i will place my salty fingers to her punctures because i caught sight of her orient

i will place my fingers to her punctures when i no longer fear men for then i won’t tremble to unbutton her shirts

i will place my fingers to her punctures when i can conjure up a nimbus to adorn her crew cut

i will place my salty fingers to her punctures if her stem-thin lips come courting

i wait and flatten

if i place my salty fingers to her punctures, she will complete her wall-sketch: a lion’s head above a hawk that bares a beak-length equal to its

wing’s breadth

with my fingers to her punctures, i press the six holes in a line that she chiseled into my thighbone hair-mussing tantrums make us a matted

constellation – the raven and red,

the crow and the fox, a bleeding bear

i must learn to bribe the moon to be her teepee no brick-walled building could endure her trembling

i will place my salty fingers to her punctures when she bristles by the fire and when wall paintings of soot, berry juice, and blood inspire

and distress her

i shall place my fingers to her if she hands over: a filed fragment of a leopard’s femur

a snake husk torn to shreds

and a once-aching half of her tooth

she will give these because the blood bramble of her eagle yearns to shriek

and she will refuse all pleas for mercy

also, may she touch me

i will place my salty fingers to her punctures of the hand that ignites my body: lavic is its touch