These Visitations

• DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910260
• Publication Date: 2023-10-27T09:18:23Z
• Authors: Brian Turner; Dorianne Laux

These Visitations Brian Turner (bio) and Dorianne Laux If a love song is made of water, the wateryou hold in your hands right now lyric, inside rusty tap released, coil silvered music unraveling, shiveringin cupped palms. A sweet thing, that. gift channeling acoustic nature world, even if it cannot be heard, here is, held light day, this strange transport tugboats sounding through fog harbor, flights to Detroit Singapore lifting off tarmac across Bay, sound us way back, making love. And sweet, too, salt lick horsesare drawn to, that wild desire, what we leave for privacy their twelve-muscled tongues, mucosa-covered, dorsal peppered with papillae, rough touch. Is also this? I lean back dunk my head into steaming waters bath, ropy hair soaking heat as drinking from summer long gone, while lover's palm guides bar milled soap cassis lime down twin slopes humming, calming small hurricanes spiral me on days like this, window open bay sparking, flaring each ripple wave, sun hidden between boulders, beneath trees, up, floating, body, ghost lost mist, begins sing. [End Page 39] writer living Orlando, Florida. With poet Laux, collaborated fictional poem an upcoming book, When You Ask Something Beautiful. Pulitzer Prize finalist Laux's Only Day Long: New Selected Poems available W. Norton, are her award-winning books Facts about Moon The Book Men. textbook, Finger Exercises Poets, forthcoming well new book poems, Life Earth. She founding faculty at Pacific University's Low-Residency MFA Program. Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today Board Regents University Oklahoma