THE SAINT ANN'S REVIEW

WILLIAM WATERS
SONG FOR LAUREN

(Christmas Eve, 2006)

Sometimes
I wish
I were
a woman—
or that you
loved men;
and that
our evenings
all began
with the taste
of your sweat
on my tongue,
and the mumble
of your moans
in my mind.

 But to desire
what isn’t
—is to profane
what is,
is to deny
the miracle
of your
gay-hand
holding mine;
—is to
deny
the blessing
of you
telling me:
you’ve had
another
hard day,
the cat
is sick,
your mom
is still mad,
teaching
sucks.

Still,
I don’t know
how
to make
this kind
of love,
how to
move
the blood
from
my balls
and invest it
into
some other
touch;
or how to
slide
the tingle
out of
my mouth
and turn it
into
something
other than
a kiss.

 So I lay
awake
in bed
and tell
myself
it’s time
to learn
new loves;
it’s time
to see
sense
in something
other than
a good
hard fuck.

It is
a slow
conversation:

The mind
telling
the body
things
it doesn’t
want
to know;
the body
urging
the mind
to change.

***

William Waters is an associate professor, in the Department of English at the University of Houston Downtown. Along with Sonja Foss, he is coauthor of Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation. His research and teaching interests are in writing theory and modern grammar.