Touching
I have a thing for marble
that has been beneath
Rodin’s hands.
I want to pull my thumb down a spine,
like a scull down the Schuylkill—
push harder,
gasp a little more.
Once I wanted a man so hard
I bit paint off the walls, can still taste
the grit.
I can see my narrow dorm,
how we knocked
Foucault off the shelf.
Or that late afternoon leaving
the strawberry wine cooler
half drunk,
when my knees hit jet-take-off angle,
him right there in the roar.
Maybe instead of my thumb
skimming the lips
of Rodin’s The Kiss, I should crouch. Be
the old woman, all
sagging breasts.
That would be the safe choice.
No one would be startled.
*
Deborah Bacharach is the author of Shake & Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her work has recently appeared in Poetry East, Last Syllable, Only Poems, and Grist among many other journals, and she has received a Pushcart prize honorable mention. She is a poetry reader for SWWIM and Whale Road Review. Find out more about her at DeborahBacharach.com.
