Last Night's Dream

Last Night’s Dream

for Ishtar

In the dream
her breasts become
confused
in my lips.
I shoot an azimuth
to her navel
while her fingertips
touch me
with concussions,
as if explosives rang
through the nerves
of my body,
as if I am strung
with wire,
a huge receiver
of UHF radio transmissions,
frequency hopping
with our tongues
as we kiss
and I slide into her
with a sound
of flashbang grenades
that make her eyes cloud over
in smoke
from the heat of it.

In the dream
she kisses Arabic
into my skin
and I understand
every word of it,
I transcribe it
backwards
into cuneiform and stone,
I rename the arteries
and veins
for every river
and wadi
from Dohuk north
to Basra south,
I feel for this geography
of pleasure,
my tongue is a marker
that writes
even in the rain,
even in salt and sweat,
and I write with it now,
over every curve
and turn of her body.

In the dream
our orgasm
destroys a nation,
it leaves thermite and gunpowder
in the air
above us,
a crackling of radio static
as we kiss on,
long into the denouement
of skin and fire,
where medevac helicopters fly
in the dark caverns
of our lungs in search
of the wounded,
and we breathe them
one to another,
a deep rotorwash
of pain and bandages.

Brian Turner