Du Fu’s Cottage

by Lauren Tivey

Koi mouths pulse open and shut, clamoring
for handfuls of pellets with flexing aggression,
the water boiling with their bodies.  Chengdu,

suffocating under the blanket of summer; even
the lotus pond, in full flower, limp. Visitors shove
and glare, while you frown in the sun, a stoic

in stone, looking thirsty for wine.  The poems
under glass, with their rising moons, misty
mountains, quivering bamboo, are whispering:

join me behind the silk curtain, lower yourself
to me, let me undo your robes, to cultivate
the glistening flower, let us roll together,

slippery as fish in the stream of time, no here,
no there, just two floating in the space of heat,
flesh, language. And I carry you with me, to

the cool relief of a hotel, its shower, its bed;
the sheets twisting under us, our quaking,
our shivering, as the world bakes outside.