263. TOPPING THE PLATE, OR, DOMINATION SHIFTS IN THE TECTONICS SINGLES BAR

From the Archives. (October 2006) A geologist at UNC Chapel Hill recently discovered that the Amazon River once flowed in the opposite direction. Yep. Just think about it. The world’s largest river basin once flowed from the Atlantic to the temperate Pacific but suddenly reversed course some 500 million years ago when a butchy Grace Joneslike tectonic plate from Africa felt the pull of a saucy plate from South America and remembered longing.

Africa shuddered briefly then slid her way across the crowded dance floor as South America anticipated the pleasure of promised resistance. Then Africa was sliding her long fingers along the South America’s curves and moaning softly as something solid gave way inside her. Recognition disappeared as suddenly as it appeared though, as South America’s mouth found Africa’s taut raised peaks, licked hungry stone.

The plates stepped back, took in the full enticing length and breadth of each other with wolf-quick motions, each still confident that nothing could dislodge her geography. Then South America pressed wrapped her long muscular legs around Africa’s eager hips and pressed the full intoxicating weight of her passion against her.

Dampness sprang from Africa’s deserts as they embarked together on an expedition into each other’s lush valleys and mounds.

Their mouths went dry. Then wet. Then dry again, their landscapes slick as the lovers gyrated through the long opening moments of this inevitable dance, during which one partner moves from controlled cautious motion into full-blown erupting earthquake, quivering and screaming as ridge finds fissure finds cave finds pounding contraction and caution tsunamis into all-out heaving gasps.

Then one plate shifted her significant weight long enough to press the full gravity of her presence into the other and the other reciprocated and they sucked in air and held on, drinking in the intoxicating musk of each other as caves throbbed open and tidepools filled with water.

Africa’s fissures were already stretched taut when the two shifted gears just long enough to stare into each other’s astonished eyes. Then the floor gave way and Africa's backbone arched and she found herself screaming with each alternating heave and thrust.

When South America tightened her legs around Africa’s bucking hips, whole valleys flooded as her stone façade gave way, spreading spewing molten lava over twitching thighs with each eruption as sedimentary stone and watery amens spewed full force from her dilating caves.

Then Africa fell headlong into that timeless moment when the slightest shift can re-establish gravity, tear open all boundaries as bodies move into and out of and over and around another’s in a heaving tectonic vibration that can leave whole rivers churning with release.

108. THIS LATE, THIS ESSENTIAL HEAT

From the Archives (June 2005)

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
by Olga Broumas

For years I fantasized pain
driving, driving
me over each threshold
I thought I had, till finally
the joy in my flesh would break
loose with the terrible
strain, and undulate
in great spasmic circles, centered
in cunt and heart. I clung to pain

because, as a drunk
and desperate boy once said, stumbling from the party
into the kitchen and the two
women there, “Pain
is the only reality.” I rolled
on the linoleum with mirth, too close
to his desperation to understand, much less
to help. Years

of that reality. Pain the link
to existence: pinch your own tissue, howl
yourself from sleep. But that night was too soon
after passion
had shocked the marrow alive in my hungry bones. The boy
fled from my laughter
painfully, and I
leaned and touched, leaned
and touched you, mesmerized, woman, stunned

by the tangible
pleasure that gripped my ribs, every time
like a caged beast, bewildered
by this late, this essential heat.

I am a poet who is fascinated by how people process pain, by what we do to be whole despite our sometimes gaping holes. I am also fascinated by the fact that these holes will sometimes show themselves in long, jagged breaths behind long slow licks that feel oh so exquisite that you may just be sucking in your own breath right now and even gasping as I hold you taut and our nerve endings quiver and there we hang suspended ... our lifelines twitching, breathing.