Chromatics of Touch by Andrea Jurjević

At the end of touch there’s a bright winter,
…………acid-green pines,

the splayed wings of branches, waxy filaments
………………………canceled by fresh snow,

crisp and white like bows on a butcher’s apron.
………………………………..A wheel of wind

spins through, a roulette turned by an invisible hand,
…………………………………………….rouses the woods

into a snow riot, a call of disorder, what’s happening
……………………………………………………..in this bed,

a kneeling, your opiate, steady grip pulling my hair,
……………………………………………………….our contours

shifting into entanglements worthy of multiple bodies,
…………………………………………..and just like that

I’m every one of the three women in Fuseli’s Symplegma,
……………………………….suffering

pleasure, an arrangement that resists the static of grief,
……………………..your release into the darkness

of my womb—that demolished room, pipes scrapped,
…………night and gravity in its place.

Andrea Jurjević is the author of Small Crimes, winner of the 2015 Philip Levine Poetry Prize, and a translator whose book-length translations from Croatian include Mamasafari (Diálogos Press, 2018) and Dead Letter Office (The Word Works, 2020). She teaches at Georgia State University.