Ashtabula: A Love Sutra by Yuyutsu Sharma

Snow bites my numb toes
as I walk over your frozen edge.
Rusting arc of the drawbridge
and the aqua of freedom glory
that swept away the stench
of the bleak history onto open Ontarios.

The motion of mighty waves has frozen
into a nudist grin, miles and miles
of white silence that has eaten your limbs.
The blackbird of shiny eyes and velvet features
perching atop your broad shoulders,
you lay bloodless, in tears,
a young widow, your own eyes
besmirched from the loss
of flaming fish of infernal colors.
I turned my head
to the doors of hunger
in your white flesh,
my fingers roving over
the mouth of the wide conch shell
of your navel from where once fluids flowed,
Ohio myrtle syrup diluted with an aroma of Oriental poppies.
One by one they wriggled out of it and
slithered onto their wailing wives . . .
I dipped my mouth into
the saucer below and fell
headlong, a wayward hunter,
into the depths of your hidden
estuaries that can feed
almost everyone on this earth . . .
I saw you shudder
like a lioness
into an erratic groaning,
about to push me off the edge.
“Do not do this.
Do not confuse my powers
as a lover with my love for you . . .”
The flurries of Midwest
sullied my face, my black coat
dotted from the flaming flakes
of Ohio snow, the winds tousled
my dark head as I slept on
the floral plains of your wide belly
like a baby in a womb
seeing his youth in a dream . . .

@Yuyutsu Sharma

From The Brownstone Poets Anthology, 2017