Trace of Lovers

1.

Boys in basketball jerseys
turn
from the sneaker sale
and elbow
each other.
They walk away
& come back.

The breast drawn into
public view
by a good
latch.

All those hormones
dizzying
the horde
pull them
closer

to find a tiny mouth
wedded
to their desire

and
my belly
whose ancient scrolls
unfurl.

Is this not
what they
bargained for?

2.

What other animals
are awake
with us?

The cats hide beneath
their paws. The neighbor’s
five dogs peaceful
at this opaque
and formless
hour.

A lizard’s white underbelly
strobes across
the bathroom window.

Our bed
wild kingdom
our burrow.

You suckle me
into the dream of the tiger
running after the baby
antelope.

My brothers yell, GO! GO!
and I turn from the TV set

as wobbly-legged
he collapses into brush.

3.

The breast pump buzzes
& beeps at intervals
through my office door.

Their professor
perverse
madonna & machine
if suddenly they entered
with camera.

My body is penmanship
marginal
to their poems.

Why alarm them?

My rushed sign reads:
Do Not
Distu^b
R

4.

The cacophony of mating season
on NPR.

Could a male penguin thaw
this bag of breast milk
between fat and fur?

I cannot imagine sex in Antarctica.
(I’m not to imagine sex
at all)

5.

Halo of milk inside the bra cup.

The afterimage, the olfactoid.

A shroud
for the faithful. Who
is just one.

O, ye
of little faith.

6.

In the playground no one smells
on me the cumulative trace
of lovers. My milk, my ilk
as alibi.

But I want to confess
to fantasies filthier
than the baby pool.

Then a phobia,
a strange moral
tic.

The bra flap clicks
back into place.

7.

At the baby shower
she unwraps
and holds in the air
a Hooter Hider.