Peter Davis © 2005 All Rights Reserved
Peter Davis © 2005 All Rights Reserved
Elegance of Surprise
It’s about now when things stop
making sense three a.m. you and I, a taxi
San Francisco streets.
In the back seat I’m humming
the pulse of the city like the thin cross—
hatch of wires that fly by the window—
a secret code I can’t quite decipher
because dawn is lurking to the right
of the corner gas station.
Patient as the street lights that guide
our way home, you’re murmuring
directions and I imagine
your hand on my thigh. I think of how
we kissed in the blue-lit bar, how nothing
ever turns out the way they do in romance
novels, more like a Dali painting—
objects dripping out of reality
into strange and lonely space.
But in an hour, I find your unfamiliar body
explaining itself under my fingers.
I realize something about the elegance of surprise
as morning arrives wordlessly
light breaking over abandoned streets
with the simplicity of a story that’s told
again and again and again
Tamiko Beyer is a queer, mixed-race writer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of online and print publications including Tea Party, EdificeWrecked, Calyx, and Gumball Poetry.