Paisaje con Huesos
Andrea Cukier
Bill Cowee
Don’t think of this as the last cigarette
before the firing squad
or the one before the guard needles tubes
into your veins, or even lengthy,
slow puffs from the weed after
all the sweating, the biting, collapse.
Ernest, the sun also sets.
The kissing ends, the last
slow inhale of her musk precedes the wrapper’s rip,
its long throaty tear,
his subsequent crunch of an energy bar
or a stick of celery.
She pops a breath mint, sprints
for the shower, the anticipated caress of netted soft-soap,
the kumquat shampoo.
Its along way from embraces on the African Queen,
Bogart and Hepburn up to their pits
in swamp water – God
now there is romance – swamp water.
Or sweating, no not perspiring, but sweating
Liz Taylor and Burton
on the pyramids of Egypt, rapt
in each other, the incense of one calling
the pheromones of the other.
Romance isn’t what it used to be, – blood and offal
stinking up the sands of the ring,
a dying bull shitting,
the crowd always upwind, it seems.
Come on baby, hold me
and we’ll show them
why sheets don’t always smell like spring.