five poems

Susanne Dyckman

Dear Temptation

you appear from some far place

offer a sandwich as if after-life can mend

your kindness is long delayed

I close my eyes against it

yet take a small bite

irresistible longing on the tongue

where are you? I am groping in the dark aware of what isn’t here

the recalled and reinvented my body wants to swallow whole

what is invisible all before me longs to be absorbed

disbelief runs from my back to the length of my right leg

skin pales so much might be lost of this night.

last night I held all the words I’d hoped

to say to you

this morning I have no idea of the sound

of those

nor can I remember

who you are

why I might have wanted

to address you with such love

you

are

making

yourself

known waking me

before dawn ancestral

shades

tracing skin along my

arm

thinned memory those

lifting me then gone

you someplace now awake, you wanting what

I she I you all my

again, awash, to rest tongue as night follows day cloud-noise

reseeding truth of job, sea, the body

fingering sense, an offer here beyond the known

lingers, responds between the rocks, remembers disordered prophecies

the protected hand, the thinning words polished after letters arrive