On Desire

A firm hand. The shadow waves of satin.
I am not yet flesh. He calls me baby,
and I touch my face. I’m searching for god
when I oil my body in the mirror. To love it
means to love a man means an opening
to another man. When I take my glasses off
all the lines blur. A body is a body without
language, I tell my girlfriend and she laughs,
mouth wide enough to hide in. She shows me
my softest parts. I dissolve into what. I forget
hiding also means a good beating, the way
passion can be suffering. I can’t believe
my whole life I never touched what made me
holy. We have bread, butter and nowhere to be.

Copyright © 2022 by Dujie Tahat. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 26, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“I drafted this poem as part of my ongoing thinking about the invisible social, historical, political, and geographic structures that frame our individual and collective desires. Our desires are always expressed through constraints: hence my desire to squeeze a longer initial draft into the tight form of the sonnet. I think we tend to experience these abstract structures, which are also about power, as fragments and through implication. With this poem and others, I want to get closer to the root of physical desire. My desire, before social formality. Desire, before language and address dictate expression.”
—Dujie Tahat