Poetry from The Literary Review

Bonobo

TIM SEIBLES

Let's not be so useless today. Let's find a field
and, Andre, bring some birds-a thousand rooks

to pepper the sky, a ruckus of toucans for color.
And Renée, don't forget the sunlight and no more than

75 degrees with the friendly breeze that swings to us.
José, we stand in a place where no one can run naked,

but the police go public with their billy clubs and guns.
Red automobiles might be waxed and shown off,

but the genitals are locked up, gaberdined, touched
in secret and dubbed "privates." Let's not mingle

with the forgive-me-my-sinners or their grim and
constipated God. And, Mae, make sure the field

is a quilt of monkey-grass and periwinkle.
Send the numbskulls to the city for a shopping day.

Then, let's get with the kisses--
who with who, who cares? Who cares!

As long as the lips are excellent
pastries and the tongues, circumspect

and merciless. It should take half the day
to spill the vulva's quick honey     longer to key

the restless clarinet of the cock--half the day
or the sun will consider the light wasted on us.

And why not be deliberately lazy with the buttery rays
like a broth ladled over us? Why not a languid

and mellifluous career grooving hallelujah with our hips,
as if this flammable symmetry were a ship always

turning between the two ports: wanting and having.
Don't let Masala and Sissy get a jump

on the fucking. Watch out for JT and Bernard.
Tell them to hold their horny horses.

Jeanette, tell them     the orgasm, like a favorite auntie,
gladly keeps an extra place at the table,
always ready whenever we arrive.

But of course, you can't stop them. Who can
ever stop any of us? Only us ourselves!

So let there be lots of fucking--proud, vigorous,
variously paced, delirious, jubilant--

from these front yards to Zimbabwe and the Taj Mahal--
fucking in the loosest, most elaborate sense

of the word. Forget the word. No! Let thighs be questions
and other thighs be answers. When we're true like this

even the sky rolls onto its back, even the most reluctant
shade slides over us: Eros in the air-bright fish

stroll from the lake   160; a black scissor-tail sings
a symphony of oboes spelling all the unsaid things.

Let's take this one chance and be terribly
kind to each other. I'm sick of wafting around

like a fart in the attic. Let's dress up
in sweat only. Leave the money to the morticians

and their cadavers. The world aches to be unstupid.
Let's make the most noise with our hearts.

______
Note: Bonobo apes, the great sensualists of the living community, employ sex--all kinds--as their basic mode of social interaction. Violence is essentially unheard of among them.