An Aubade in Eight Parts // Five (5)

Poetry by Ann Pedone

An Aubade In Eight Parts

It was as if he had stepped into my head; into the blue currents of my brain; I awaken with the taste of him in my mouth

How does the tongue know what to do; how do fingers; he tells me it all has something to do with the way electricity flows through water; one day I will reach the middle of him

My hips open; a field without a memory; a body without salt

There were people fucking in the room next to us; I sank into the bed; and listened as the headboard pounded the wall; I don’t think he loves her anymore

Sex has no name; it is transparent; all you can do is watch as it discloses itself; like the beating of a wing

The bleached sky of morning; he shifts noiselessly under the sheets; I can still feel his body running underneath mine; hummingbird

I turn my back and he moves into me; maybe it is still possible for a woman to accumulate lucidity

He buries his face in the marrow of my neck; dawn stutters through the window; I reach over and switch off the lamp; and watch myself exhale into something that used to be called the soul

//

FIVE (5)

[I have been fed something
I don’t understand
maybe I said hunger
when I meant desire]

[my body double
folded and red
you tell me
sex is
nothing but
the making of marks]

[I demand secrets
build me a shrine
read the palm of my hand
perhaps you will say
a woman is the
slowest form of electricity]

[a strange heat
came between us
lets the self recede
always receeding]

[open eyed & salted skin
let me make you into
something that will
come inside of me
like the sea]

Ann Pedone graduated from Bard College with a degree in English Literature and has a Master’s Degree in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. Ann is the author of the chapbooks The Bird Happened (Leave Books), perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of sappho. (Cup and Dagger Press) as well as the forthcoming DREAM/WORK and Everywhere You Put Your Mouth (Halas Press.) Her work has recently appeared in multiple journals including Narrative Magazine, Abralemin, Slant, Contemporary Verse 2, The Phare, West Trade Review, The Open Page Literary Journal, The French Literary Review, SAND, and The Shore.