11

by Robert Sheppard

Overdub of When lovers’ lips from kissing disunite
by Charles Tennyson Turner

Move back from her breaking lips. Taste
as soft as melting fruit. They’d have to tunnel
through time to reach the free world now. Her
first words ushered to the night are fraught
with breathless thoughts of ‘wealth or health’

Revelation unburdens in the boudoir
Suspended rights. One regulation afternoon
spent dodging a jogger whose merest huff ’s
deadly as gunshot. Zigzag tacks across the grass

The nearest kiss is a memory–print on electric
skin. Thrills still pledge where thrusts are deep
and long. Slip from history’s distant night

Doves fight over an olive branch. Crows
scrabble for negative crumbs on silent slates

22nd April 2020