Prayer for Men
I will not praise your body after sex
naked on the small, white bed
as prayer is sent to gods, and you,
thin-boned and sleeping,
vulnerable to my hands and mouth,
are too humane for ancient games.
If you had come a whirl of smoke, deified
exhausted fire, turned inside me
burning till my tongue learned flames,
then I might praise you.
If you had put on feathers and descended,
pulled me into sky or water, hung me
weightless, pinned inside your beating wing,
then I might praise you.
But you entered the way a man is made to
enter, asked my name, then waited
for an answer the way men do. It’s praise
to watch you listen in your sleep, to fit
the curve your body questions: praise enough
to guard you until morning. Then gods will
lie down on mountaintops and dream their human
dreams of prayer, of women, of love.
—Erin Belieu, from Infanta (Copper Canyon Press, 1995)
