BY ADRIAN ERNESTO CEPEDA
Her Pool was Glistening
I missed her whistling,
seductively spreading
the soft of splashes
enticing me to follow her,
my Rosa, her hips already
glowing in the water, lips
savoring to devour each
and every drop, I could tell
from those shivering blinks
her moonlit eyes loved softly
undressing me, slowly, I glimpsed
the giggling sips of her white
wine breath, behind me, slipping
I felt her pool was spinning—
I wasn’t ready but she pushed
me in towards her deep end,
Rosa’s tongue caught me elongating
waves as we shared bubbles
of chlorine even deeper luna
kisses radiating from her bikini-less
skin. I could feel her sea diver
taste buds reigniting underwater,
deeply intensifying our midnight
swim, closer I felt more than just
a mouthful of sips, I saw her face,
the first-time glimpsing Rosa
spreading her fountains, gushing,
ready to splash her softest mystery,
she was my guide, we moved
instantly swimming deeper—
finally, I listened to her faucet
eyes tidal me closer; ready,
wanting— skinny dripping,
she softly leaned while nakedly
instructing, pointing to her
softest garden, curly glistening
summer, I could feel Rosa
shivering a whisper—
“let’s go inside…”
Lovers alone wear sunlight
You kiss the back of my legs
and I want to cry. In the heat
of her hands I thought, this is
the campfire that mocks the sun.
yours is the light by which
my spirit’s born: yours is
the darkness, as long as the sun
exists, your name will exist
like a sun-filled window,
there are souls that you feel
to lean forward to, your belly
the sun seed I planted in
my chest.“Her Spanish
sounds like sunlight drying
a wet shirt. She’s delicadeza
She was a pure spirit, easily
susceptible to emotion, one
moment she’d be crying,
like sunshine after a shower.
Isn’t it enough to be out
walking together in the sunlight?
through a window, which I
stand in, warmed, the sun
comes out of your body like
a fruit. I had been lost to
you, sunlight, and flew
like a moth to you, sunlight,
Oh, your love is sunlight
[But] Is it love, the way
you toss your head and
create the sun? If you
are the rising sun, I am
the road of blood. And
there is, for me, no difference
between writing a good
poem and moving into
sunlight against the body
of a woman I love. Oh,
your hair is red-gold, red-
gold, your skin is like
sunlight on snow. He
smiled, and his face was
like the sun. The first
summer was pure happiness.
I was experiencing another
human being, I was barefoot
in the sand so fine, it was as
if it breathed beneath my feet.
It was as if I were living within
soft walls of sunlight and desire.
references above
1 E.E. Cummings, “unlove’s the heavenless hell and homeless home”
2 Shauna Barbosa, “GPS”
3 Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
4 E.E. Cummings, “silently if, out of not knowable”
5 from a wall relief on the West Wall in the Chapel of Rameses I
6 Federico García Lorca, source unknown
7 Octavio Paz, “A Tale of Two Gardens”
8 Eugene Gloria, “The Verb To Lick”
9 Gustave Flaubert, in a letter to Louise Colet
10 Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins
11 Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist
12 Homero Aridjis, Blue Spaces
13 Hozier, “Sunlight”
14 Stimie
15 Octavio Paz, “Motion”
16 Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
17 Tennessee Williams, “The Mutilated”
18 Madeline Miller, The Song of Achille
19 Liv Ullman on Ingmar Bergman, Liv & Ingmar
Adrian Ernesto Cepeda is the author of the full-length poetry collection Flashes & Verses… Becoming Attractions from Unsolicited Press, the poetry chapbook So Many Flowers, So Little Time from Red Mare Press. Between the Spine is a collection of erotic love poems published with Picture Show Press and La Belle Ajar, a collection of cento poems inspired by Sylvia Plath's 1963 novel published in 2020 by CLASH Books. Adrian is an LA Poet who has a BA from the University of Texas at San Antonio and he is also a graduate of the MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles where he lives with his wife and their cat Woody Gold. You can connect with Adrian on his website: http://www.adrianernestocepeda.com/
