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Excavation


by Philip F. Clark


We unearth the other bodies, having 
buried our own. We contemplate
bone, buttock and lip; the rise of the 
back into the neck, the slope of the glute,
the dark velvet slide of the tongue. 
Inveterate archeologists of the kiss, 
we compare his thighs to this, your calf 
to the one in the moonlight that night 
at the beach. In the dust it all seems 
clear how the bodies intertwine, as if
they were dolls made from many
different doll parts; this one beautiful 
eye battered blue, the muscled arm
potent with vein, the fine chest and
nipple now licked and slept upon,
to be remembered in some far distant
summer: Oh yes, oh yes, I had him.
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