Coital, Post Coital

       simple                          ample
       plenitude                    lassitude
       dissolution                 dilution

       The plenitude of her bosom compelled him from his lassitude.
       He worked himself to dissolution over her ample flesh,
       the simplest dilution of I and Thou.

        mulierity                   celerity
        fleetness                   completeness
        unified                       deified

       Deifying her mulierity, he mourned
       the fleetness with which its splendor would dim,
       the celerity with which their unified forms lost completeness.

        dimple                      damper
        amplitude                rumpled
       resolution                solemnity

       She rumpled his hair, amused by his solemnity.
       Certainly her amplitude could restore his dimples.
       She vowed to put a damper on any overblown resolutions,

       formulaic                 mulct
       lyrical                       rictus
       magnificent             fecal

       to mulct the formulaic, fecal rictus of her Poet,
       swelling him lyrical once again,
       ready to tongue her magnificence.

Days

                            there are days that crack you to marrow but don’t
       consume you, bluebottles land and lay eggs in your stink, buzz
       in your head, presaging swarm.                days you lift your
       rock on the larval, the scurrying, the writhing.       days
       when you lie where you’ve fallen, the torn corner of something
       larger shorn of sense, pen-scrawl blurred by rain, muddied
       by footsteps.       days you avoid mirrors, windowglass,
       carsheen, afraid of the changeling self that awaits you, Dorian
       Grey resisting his likeness.      days when light pains
       you, eyes narrowed to slits, a camera obscura of the not-quite
       burned into corneas.       days when you carry yourself
       as gingerly as a medic a patient with severed spine, hoping
       not to paralyze before reaching the field station.      days
       when you tip your head back to keep nose above panic, knowing
       full well that the more you fight, the faster you sink, and above all,
       you must not go under.

Devon Balwit is a writer and teacher from Portland, OR. She has two chapbooks forthcoming: how the blessed travel (Maverick Duck Press), and Forms Most Marvelous (dancing girl press). Her recent work has found many homes, among them: Oyez, The Cincinnati Review, Red Paint Hill, Timberline Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review , Trailhead Review, and Oracle.
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