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MANAGE YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONSelected Poems
The complete text of this selection is available in our print edition.
Reading In Bed
Sometimes it seems like this
is what the rest of the day is made for.
Curled with my spine pressed to my lover’s breast,
my cold ass warmed by her generous thighs.
Whatever was going to happen today
has already happened. The dog’s asleep.
Lamplight pools on the page, making its own
small gold world, where the mountain climbers
switch on their headlamps, fasten crampons,
fix their ice claws and pickaxes and carabiners.
They melt snow for tea on a single burner
and start off in the ghostly moonlight.
Skulls throb, they’ve got wracking coughs,
their nostrils freeze with every breath
as they traverse fins of vertical ice, past hidden
crevasses and avalanche paths. The beast
of wind tears at their faces; waves
of powder pour down the slopes.
It’s almost midnight. The phone won’t ring.
My children aren’t going to ask for money.
No one’s car will run out of gas on the freeway.
I won’t get my mammogram results.
I slide my feet along the warm sheets.
Personal. Political. Provocative. Subscribe to The Sun and save 55%.
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