Stealth, or A Sweet Bit of Stealing by Carol Potter

She said she loved me. She was a mink stole.
A girl stole. The stole between her legs. Her breasts
stole me, her mouth had me. She and I stole from each
other. We drove to another state and the state
stole from us. Jesus stole something. There were signs
along the roadway: Jesus Saves. We were stealing
ourselves quietly by ourselves so no one could see.
There were cicadas stealing the silence from the air.
Stealing our words. Cracking them together between
their legs. We were stealing the state. We got stolen
from. There were bees in the apples stealing
sweet meat from the trees. There were apples on
the ground stealing dirt from the earth. There
were stealers stealing around us singing their bird
songs. There was a flood and a stealing stinging
bee sting.  She stung me. I loved her. She stole and I stole
from her. She loved me.  It was  a sweet bit of stealing.
A nickel. A dime. A few years. Some bird song.

Carol Potter is the 2014 winner of the Field Poetry Prize for her 5^th book of poems, Some Slow Bees from Oberlin College Press. Potter’s poems have appeared in Green Mountains Review, Field,  The Iowa Review, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She has recent poems in Hotel Amerika, The Massachusetts Review, and The New England Review,  and poems forthcoming in River Styx, Field, and Poet Lore. She teaches for the Antioch University MFA program in Los Angeles.  More Info: cwpotterverse.net