Don't Kiss Me in My Deaf Ear

Don't kiss me in my deaf ear.
I have a number of other requests
for your tongue and my name.
You can talk to my
fingertips so there's your warm
speech between hands and keyboard
or you can talk
down my dress and let it puff out
or blow all the tiny hairs a little
apart -- a red sea on the skin.
You might write
sums on my belly
with that tongue. Do math
like 3 times seven is the breaking apart of one set
of lips from another and four
times eight goes straight
from spine to tail to legs
wrapped around all of this. Don't
kiss me in my deaf ear. Kiss me on
the eyes so colors separate
and join (blue yellow green red
purple) like cellophane
in the prism of four eyes plus four
extra eyes (glasses, contacts, and blindnesses
'cause blindnesses have a sense of wherenesses
based on distance and time). We might
take a drive and, in
my good ear, the traffic
surf can take on the accounting: one,
one, one, sh, sh, sh. Don't kiss
me in my deaf ear. Pour it
in the other one,
my left ear, which
happens to be
the ear for which arithmetic
becomes music. In my good ear
all of this see touch taste
smell is a good and symphonic
calculus.

Copyright Louise Robertson