Skin

Haven’t we all been told how beauty is thin as truth? And don’t we believe and disbelieve this “lie we’d carve and starve for. / We’d suck it till the juice ran down our arms”? Skin compels us, repels us. Beauty may be only skin deep, a fine covering—sensuous, at times translucent, almost transparent, and yet so obdurate. Skin insulates, guarding its vital organs just beneath this surface that teases us to peek, to try to penetrate. We call this desire by many names, the best of which is love. April Lindner’s sensuously orchestrated collection of poems conveys the beauty and truth of love, how we know it to be paradoxical, obsessive, fearful, rapacious, holy.—Robert FinkFontanelHere’s the ravine, a stretch of skinspanning the breach like a footbridge.Canvas-thin, it trembles with the bloodthat runs beneath. Something less tangiblecourses there too, a whitewater flumeof images: the stretching housecat;car keys that sing and catch light;floorboards knotted with dark, animal eyes;the window with its shifting square of sky.All things equal, each thing startling,and everything unmediated by the mind’shabitual grapple with whyand so what. You frown at a fadedwallpaper pineapple, and the membraneflutters harder. I’m carefulwhen I comb your sparse brown hair.When I sing your name I borrow a liltI’d never use in speech. The wordsdon’t matter; I’m saying drink me while you can,like milk. Let me be flesh and flannel,hands that loosen your tangled blanket.Know me by scent before you learn my name,before doorknobs turn into doorknobs,before the gates knit shut.