POTN 7

POETRY  |  FICTION

The Perseid Lights

by Gary J. Whitehead, art by Bridget McCoy

Where had her tongue been, I wondered:
bending and flexing over the blossoms of another
woman, the color of that fulcrum, in what little light
there must have been, lavender?

I like to think that it was night, August, that languid
need hot darkness breeds fired inside
their bodies like the Perseid
lights, that I watched

them hungrily from the thick shadows.
Their opulent kisses like bites of sky,
their nipples like the stars. Why,
when I kissed her then, could I close

and open, and know she had dropped her tongue's
pebbles, her ripples, where I had left them?