Valentines: “Thanksgiving,” “Circle: Redux,” “bi 4 bi,” by Shira Haus
Thanksgiving
While I’m away, you palm the spare key
and feed my cat. Rummage in my desk,
sort stacks of bills and broken jewelry, toss
anything extraneous. I trust you
to rake through my life like a comb through
matted hair. Like everyone, I’ve always needed help
but have never known how to ask without shame.
At night, my parents order noodles from the Taiwanese place
around the corner. My sisters holler at the same old joke.
You walk through my house and send me photos
detailing exactly how and where you’ll fuck me
when I get back: bent over the couch, on your knees
in the shower, the kitchen table, roommate be damned.
And it doesn’t feel violent. It doesn’t feel
like a knife against my tongue, daring me
to close my mouth against the blade. Simple,
simple as a fresh sage leaf, a yellow moon.
Confession: I didn’t bring you with me
because there isn’t room for you in my family.
You’re allergic to oranges; my grandmother slices five,
arranges them in patterns on ceramic plates.
We have separate rituals. Or that’s what I told everyone—
can’t take back a handful of salt after adding it to the soup.
Although, a man once asked me to pick out every single onion
from a glass bowl of diced vegetables
because he made a mistake. Another man begged me
not to look as he threw up in the sink
at my grandmother’s house
the morning after Thanksgiving.
He thought he was helping. I don’t want you
to smell burning, to taste his residue still
floating like ash. I don’t need you to bar me
from your ugliness, or from mine. I just miss
the crush of your body as I feel you walk into my room
hundreds of miles away. Your presence
thumbprinting the air like dough. I know
you are hiding a lot from me. A lot of yourself
that you don't like. Familiar to me as my own
flushed skin after you make me come. The room
cooling, the dim lamp, the poke of your earring.
Anything you don't hide, you give me. If only I
could tell you not to worry. Somewhere, there is
an apple tree waiting for us
brimming with so much fruit
it's a sin not to eat it.
Circle: Redux
falling / once again / into the relief of a shared bed /
how scent blossoms from damp hair, water awakening
what was dormant / the velvet of your cheek relights
my memory like a torch / opens
my mouth with a wrench / presses the silver coin of my
want into your hand / under the table / exchange
so secret / everyone sees / give me
iron / sweet salt of your fingers / bloom me rust on
metal / mold on bread / mushroom on grave / rewind
the tape / revel in the muck
make the old / new again / create life
/ where there was once only death
I dare anyone to call that / weakness
bi 4 bi
his jeans hanging loose on my hips, I pose him
against the shuttered window. he lights up
under the camera flash. my skirt brushes
his ankles like the tail of a playful cat
my dress swirls around his knees like the mouth
of a hungry river. gloved in dollar-store lipstick
he parts for me. how my breath
barely breaks as I move atop him
lavender-shadowed eyelids jumping
in time with my pulse. his hands tied
to the frame we built together. my dear lover
who bends me, who bends with me
tuning forks trembling toward
a note only we can hear.
About Shira Haus
Shira Leah Haus is a queer, Jewish writer from Michigan. She earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Tennessee and is currently a copyeditor for The Offing. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Copper Nickel, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and Wildness, among others, and her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and has been a finalist for the PINCH Literary Awards for poetry and the ONLY POEMS Leonard Cohen Poetry Prize.