By Sandra Beasley

Sweet boy, every inch I‘d [blank] in your bed

I want to [blank] in your bed seven times.

Thigh, gaze, sigh, finger, slap: There is no end

to the blanks I’d like to fill in with you.

But I’m trying to be good. So we meet

for this redundantly termed “bite to eat,”

sinners in Puritan drag. Let us eat

now, bite later. If I’m pilgrim, your bed

is Plymouth Rock. If I’m pilgrim, I’d meet

the ship to de-flower your May dockside. Times

do not evolve past such hungers; though you

can groom, tame, belt, buckle, trim the split ends

and the hair just grows faster in the end.

This bistro soup? Not what I want to eat.

I want to hunker in your kitchen–you

flipping bacon from greasy pan to bed

of thick-cut French toast, not taking the time

to wipe, swig, or brush before our tongues meet

with the crumbs still clinging and salty meat

lingering in our teeth–I want to end

up floor-licked under you, rug-burnt. Sometimes

foreplay’s a three-fork place set before eating

with your hands. Sweat our only salt, a bed

our only plate. If you get me, then you

should go ahead and get the check. If you

don’t, go ahead and get the check; I’ll meet

your half, tip well, head home to my own bed.

But that’s not how I want this date to end.

In Hokusai’s world, a woman could eat

octopus sushi yet dream, other times,

of the beast devouring her, spread eight times

wide on a coral bed. I’d love for you

and I to be so fair in how we eat:

a kind of welfare, making sure ends meet.

Literally. A meal feeds a weekend,

shakes the folded napkin of a made bed.

At times a spoon should be steel-less, meeting

curve to curve as you begin at my end:

Möbius, stripped. Come eat breakfast in bed.

–Sandra Beasley