Foreplay: A Reader's Guide

Do not give me five minutes
with your fingers twisting at my nipples. No,
that will not do at all. Nor do I want
an assault on my nether regions, your breath
vehement and alcoholic at my ear. My GOD,
what do you think I am, a vending machine? I need time, dear lover,
time to get comfortable, time to get horizontal, time to get my juices optimal.
I would never, unless under extreme urgency like a flood coming or the Spanish
Inquisition (or parents in the other room) tear at your belt buckle, hoist your cock out of its
Hanes shell, and mount. Well, maybe I would but that’s just after the beginning,
after the Victorian courting procedures involving lengthy emails and simmering
innuendo, after first and second and third base have been stolen in
back seats and late-night booty calls, after movies and dinners and after you have kissed me
long and hard. Then maybe I will approve of this batten-down-the-hatches
sex I know you love, that whoa-nelly-a-storm’s-a-brewin’ fucking
that makes us dash indoors like the skittish breeders we are.
Then it’s alright to twist and pin and squirm and squint and truncate what might be
in the night, to you, an overlong procedure.

Not now, though, or ever if we can make this work accordingly.
Because it is this that keeps me awake at night, shimmying
like a hula girl on a humming dashboard. A thumb drawing, meticulously,
the curve made by a juxtaposing hip. The timid orchid scent of an opening eyelid.
The musk convinced out of the pre-dawn sheets,
when we wake and are awakened by the waking.
Your hunger coupled with my hunger coupled with the music
we are capable of orchestrating, and the beauty of the metronome in all of that.
The conversation your tongue could make with my lower back. What I would do
if given the time to articulate the syllables
resting in your collarbone.