Marking Time

by Susan McDonough-Hintz

11:01 a.m.
Goodbye filled our mouths and lingered,
diffuse on the tongues, swirling.

6:32 a.m.
This morning I reached for a
tube of toothpaste and my
neck hairs lifted like eyelids,
my nipples stiff as peaks, nostrils
flared by the sudden smell of you,
but you weren’t there.

6:41 a.m.
I was alarmed.
The light was changing.

8:26 p.m.
Halfway up the mountain
night falls. I dig my bed
in dirt, cover myself with leaves,
and sleep, awake unearthed and
well bruised. Jagged rocks,
out of my way.

4:44 a.m.
I am alive and all of you is surge. 
And the flash. 

Patience, My Earthbound Wormy Loves

by Susan McDonough-Hintz

November sends us underground.

Blood-brimming wrigglers.

We mine ore and rutilated grace,

shave through tunnels,

feed in fallow fields.

Harmless lies.

After soil stiffens in winter’s icy linens,

we shoot up

an early spring among the green

remnants of spent days and semen

that melt into must-haves

or stony perhaps.

Toss us to the silk-spun drape of night.

Dissect the dark.

Cluster us.
We are tangled water-bearers,
scorpions, two virgins,

one ram.