Clockwork Erotica: Why He Takes Off His Glasses When Telekinesis Fails

← v8n1, Spring 2009

The white heather nods like automata

under my cypress. In my dream their calico

light in the antique theater is not enough

to dim the carved faces from two

wooden lovers—wound by clockwork

to perform sexual acts. The men

in the audience smell blackly

of cognac and bay leaves once

souped in my wet hair. I know a widower

sits beside me by the waft of nutmeg

tucked in his pocket—an apron’s secret

lavender ties. From the second row he fails

to break the grand crystal chandelier

with his stare and removes

his glasses. The artificial woman’s

moan hole, ovaled in planes of young olive,

blurs to his dead wife’s parted lips,

their spittled edges. She once raised—

with her breath—a steaming

loaf of rough-grained pumpernickel,

that whole black hill, cooled.

desire grief memory sexuality

Anna Journey

Anna Journey is the author of the poetry collections The Judas Ear (Louisiana State University Press, 2022), The Atheist Wore Goat Silk (Louisiana State University Press, 2017), Vulgar Remedies (Louisiana State University Press, 2013), and If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting (University of Georgia Press, 2009), which was selected by Thomas Lux for the National Poetry Series. She also published the essay collection An Arrangement of Skin (Counterpoint, 2017). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker , The American Poetry Review , FIELD , the Kenyon Review , The Southern Review , and elsewhere. Journey is the recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern California. Photo by Stephanie Diani