Buoyant miracles of want

To M.

Up late watching slug porn, you confess
you had a boyfriend who could spin you

like that, slug grace and slug ballet - we don't
touch the topic of slime - and those eyes

dangling from tentacle tips must be a
kind of love or lust, sighting farther and

nearer all at once. (But are those eyes?)
Slug sublimity suggests love's a drag,

touch that lingers and leaves a wet trail of
memory and... What did we do before

YouTube? Boob tube. Boobs we have none; slugs,
of course, don't care, can't tell girl from boy,

(being, you know, hermaphrodites), and only
want flesh to fly. Forget their infamous

langour - here's litheness in loving, buoyant
miracles of want, one slug spiraling

on the axis of another like a globe
slapped by an insolent hand. Neither old

nor young, nor familiar with sluggishness,
too tired to explain why nothing makes us

spin like that: a-swirl, a pirouette, a gyre!
It's either fucking or marriage, I say,

saying more than I mean. Why can't lust be
love and love be lust? you're always asking,

even now as the slugs begin their sluggish
withdrawal - each complete in love and lust;

each mother and father to what they've made
together; each alone, content, and free.

Conversation with Slugs and Sarah, by Jennifer Chang

Read by her here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/2770