Floating Palace Poem by Bernard Henrie

When she speaks Spanish her lips
are scented with jacaranda; bathing
I see her convex belly;

childbirth and childbirth again.

She is from a big city. Straight toes,
bleached teeth, the unwrinkled hands.
Her voice and familiar forms of address
she uses on the promenade deck for stray
children, or calling her own family
on radio telephone back in Lima.

Dead give aways, her hairless thighs,
smooth spaces high into her clothes,
the scented acacia under a naked waist
like a bloom in the Patagonian steppes.

The moist wattle a jewel case kept hidden
from night thieves.

She kisses with a cigarette in her hand
and gets drunk on my body. She bites my leg
and shoulders, she wounds with her breath,
her mouth painted red as a fire eater.

By turns she calls 'mi amour' or 'papa'
or 'patron.'

I am drugged by her body, I trespass
her body, I become a criminal thinking how
she walks, my clothes open and fall
in disarray, the puma of our excitement
opens its claws. I think of a forest fire,
slate white light heats our room, an ermine
fur of luxury falls and surrounds us.

Later, an Autumnal eclipse enters the room
and my head cools. As I recompose she gives
me money for the ship casino.

The rouge-red carpet and baccarat tables
green as the tumbling ocean waves.

Tomorrow she gambles with a new croupier.