100 Poems Titled "James"

Peaches are made of your spit.
The young apples on our tree

have the weight of your
genitalia at night, in the warm

baths, in the lonely afternoons,
and they are a euphemism for

long ago when we were just
tasting each other, when our looking

at each other imposed the burden
of being seen.

You are so formed, so
narrow, so dry-skin, lean-bones,

eczema like rashy oatmeal continents spreading
on your hips, back, and butt -- you are

so formed by use and thought,
I must have dreamt you up along with

crickets among the wide rough strips
of grass and rasp. You pull them

up and place them between aligned thumbs
with mouth on crevice -- that is a euphemism

for our sex life. And having described
to the world your soft brown hair

like spiders tangled and crawling up your belly
and your touches like fallen eyelashes --

having already done this, I have also
started writing 100 new poems titled "James"

and not all of them good
and not all of them nice.

Copyright Louise Robertson