My Tongue Carbon Dates Your Skin: a Modern Triple Sonnet, by Marianne Peel

The Lovers, by Rene Magritte (Belgium) 1928

My Tongue Carbon Dates Your Skin: a Modern Triple Sonnet                       
 
I want to crawl beneath your flesh.  
But we are cloaked in opaque scarves, 
our hair flattened beneath white silk shrouds.
I want to venerate you, genuflect before you. 
No hair shirt groveling on shards of glass, no flagellation 
with cat o’ nine tails.  Are you forgery beneath this cloth?  
You taste of sepia and ivory lilies in spring. If I remove 
your scarf, will your face, your whole naked body, 
be imprinted on the cloth?  You are a Shroud of Turin 
without the crown of thorns, without the bloody brawl 
gripping your face. Your face placid beneath this mask.  
Still and soundless as a luna moth clinging to the porch light.  
Persimmon and pecan dust on your wings. We are both 
accordion-creased and windblown.  
 
A current vibrates between our mouths.  
Our foreheads rouged with sumac and sweetgum.                   
See how the wind has ruffled our hair.  
We are sightless lovers. My mouth rambunctious, 
restless. I am hungry for the braille that is you.  
You could be anyone.  The man hauling a bag of lemons 
over his left shoulder at the fish market.  The women 
whose stocking is shod through with runs. 
Repairs with daubs of clear acrylic nail polish, 
cauterizing the spread of the rip. 
The woman slumped at the laundromat, 
lighting stubs of cigarettes abandoned on the floor.                   
Her knees coated with dryer lint and shredded tissues.                  
How can we so misunderstand?  You are unknowable. 
 
I want to dismantle my tie clip, release 
the knot of burlap choke-holding my throat.  
I want to devour you.  Bitter herb of you.   
Lamb shank of you.    I paint my mouth 
with saltwater, search for your lips. 
Between cups of chardonnay and horseradish, 
you are charoset on my tongue: 
paste of walnuts and apples, pear and wine. 
You pardon all my iniquities with the come-hither tilt 
of your head.  The way you lean in to receive my tongue. 
But this is a hot August night and we are rootless trees, 
floating in the mangrove.  Our shrouds spiral salt tears
into the waterlogged mud.  Nests balance on our branches, 
still wet with the saliva of blue herons and roseate spoonbills.    

Marianne Peel

Marianne Peel loves poetry that literally makes her stop breathing.  She worked for thirty-two years as an English teacher, learning life lessons from her students as well as from Albee's Zoo Story, Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, and Shaffer's Equus. She loves to play Native American Flute and ukulele in the woods. She’s taught teachers in China for three summers, studied in Nepal and Turkey on Fulbright Scholarships, and has danced in the rain forests of Bali, Indonesia. Her debut book of poetry is No Distance Between Us through Shadelandhouse Modern Press.  She has a second full-length collection, Singing is Praying Twice, published in 2024, from the same publisher.