Sarah Howe

 

Night in Arizona

The last of the sheet I shuffle off an ankle—
a sound like the spilling of sand
from shovel and the night air blurs

for a second with its footfall.
Our entwined shape a word in the dark.
On my forehead and cheek

I feel each flourishing
charge of your breathing
as a moment's reprieve. Heat

in this place goes deeper than sleep,
wraps everything, increases its sheen—
the forearm weighting your flank

as you turn, delicate curlicues
slick on the back of your thighs,
my fingers on the stiffened neck

and eyes aware of several kinds of dark
struggling to perfect themselves—
the hidden chair, the bouquet of our clothes

the razory arms of a juniper rattling crazily
at the edge of that endless reddening haze—
glad we move on to the city at dawn.

 

The bowl of milk

This eve-
ning light
is good
enough
to eat.
In the
windowed
kitchen
everything
is white
no longer.
Sweetness
over-
flows, my
honey-
suckle of
the flame-
like tubes,
my blushed
tin sink
is swall-
owing
diamonds.

 

Copyright © 2008, Sarah Howe.

Sarah Howe was born in Hong Kong in 1983 to an English father and Chinese mother, and is now working on a PhD on the visual imagination in poetry at the University of Cambridge.