The Insomniac’s Mouth

drones like a cave ululating the breeze of an unmoored summer
night. In a hotel room his lover waits, the city’s roads sliming
the barrenness of tongue. In his mind’s posterior, anticipation
acquires memorability, irrespective of consequence. Hairs on his

forearm sprawl outside the frame like threads uncoiling from a moist
bough. Before entering the heart of this rapt noirness, he decides
to make his mouth hot. A tea person, he realizes, for the purpose
of smoothening vein and lactating speech, there’s nothing better

than coffee at a roadside stall. Now whatever our eyes can’t and
mustn’t see— the ether beyond curtains, the city swelling in bed
-rooms past midnight, bodies crackling as sites for penetration of
memory— is for the preservation of imaginative jealousy as a sacred

stimulant for living. By the virtue of blood and bone, one hunger
briskly passes over to another. Bread basking in the steam of kettles.
Palms glowering golden, faces lush. Dawn, a mutual adoration of
loss. Loss, a festive sadness. And the departure’s goodbye sprawl,
a peacock displaying its regal span forecasting another downpour.