Chinese Dragons
By David Bottoms
What do we want to give each other as we park under
the sign
of the Electric Dragon?
Mysterious, you say, a name
like some bizarre arrangement of stars, a tail
of fire crawling all the way from China.
And tonight, looking up through the windshield
of my truck, we know already
what they’ll be, no need to study the walls
of patterns, the yellow parrots
climbing stalks of cane, the rosebuds
unfolding under the paws
of red leopards, the erotic fish.
Hum of the needle, and that pale, breathless moment
of no turning back–
your eyes cut from mine
to the blue hand pointing toward the chair.
And when you sit in that chair, your blouse draped
on one shoulder, I know what claws out
of the sky and into your arm, what
will claw into my calf
and ankle, is something more than legend.
In your eyes as he needles the fire–
our desire for permanence and the permanence
of our desire.
