ON MAKING LOVE IN A LESBIAN HOUSEHOLD

ON MAKING LOVE IN A LESBIAN HOUSEHOLD

(“The pressures TO CONFORM in a society increasingly conservative in mood
have become more intense.” p.24 Blood Bread & Poetry, Compulsive Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, essays by Adrienne Rich)

You led me to that nest
set squarely among the Somerville working classes

You led me by the hand
to stretch us both precariously
on sheets accustomed
only to women’s scented ceremony
The puzzle of our coupling
waiting to be unraveled
as if liking the same trendy vermicelli
or the latest theories on chromosomes
could hold some secret for attraction
in their twisty sweaty coils

Which could never explain
Annie’s disdainful mouth
muttering something about“a strange alien aura”
invading their space
Or Lisa seated downstairs in her velvet chair
silent as if attending a wake
pulling her headband ever-tighter
that made her eyes bulge from hateful sockets
consecrating sisterhood in a rosary of pain

Both of them jealous suitors

Both of them unwilling to let you love
outside their sorority

And when you broke faith with moonlit shadows
as you blushed crimson before a stranger
Still afraid that I like those
you had been taught to fear
Would spear you with infected want
and then demand to shave your silky stubble
into bloody furrows of Rosarch blots
only to drip cultivating seeds of maleness
Between your knees that smelled of lilacs
on a naked carpet of exhausted innocence
Where we combined easily

in ripples of laughter

Effortless while we joined at the hip
as Paul Horn’s lute played inside
the Taj Mahal of our minds that built
a refuge for pilgrims

about to embark
on a new journey of immersion

And our breaths echoed in responsive dharmas
all during the nights and daysof that hide—and—seek pastel Autumn
While mystical music
of our arrangement

Blanketed us both

in the consequence of gentle sleep.