Poetry Winner 2007:
Ritual
by Shanna Germain
Every Sunday
after the paper after the coffee
after the football scores have been checked one last time,
we strip naked and climb back beneath the covers.
It seems, sometimes, like we're cheating,
making an appointment for sex as though we're seventy,
and not 27 and 29.
It's a secret we do not share with friends;
they would say: what of passion? what of
being taken on the kitchen floor at midnight?
But passion is easily lost, and cannot
find its way to the kitchen floor at any time of day.
On Sundays, we have time to linger,
our fingers raising the dead flesh,
the parts of our bodies we had forgotten
we owned during the week.
In the daylight, our bodies do not glisten
Like golden statues. Our skin bears the marks
of so much human hope, an idol in the pocket
whose belly is rubbed raw with desire.
It seems, sometimes, like we're laughing
in the face of god, spending Sundays
curled around each other, not yet married.
But then I remember the one thing I took
from Sunday school: Be good to your body, they said,
Your body is a temple. Your body is prayer.
©2007 by Shanna Germain
For more information on Shanna Germain, see her Web site.
Rauxa: n.
of Catalan origin
unbridled emotion and passion; wild spontaneity; overflowing creativity and capacity for action
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