from 'Variations on Adonis'
On the dance floor, the heat of your body played a game
with the heat of my hands.
Our skin was young, fleeing its history lessons
toward its animal wish.
Your fingers on my neck, we made a little cove for our breath
in the crowd, as speakers spilled their electric seas
and the floor pulsed like an artery under us.
And for a while we were only our bodies
and my field of vision was your hair against our cheeks
and exchanged mouths.
Outside, in our winter jackets, faces flushed, holding hands,
we exchanged middle names, shared a cigarette and waited
for a cab that years later became a little boat in a dream I woke from,
alone, on a road that lead to an unknown shore
under a sky full of questions.
Jesús Castillo
Jesús Castillo was born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. He holds a B.A. in Literature from U.C. San Diego and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His first book, a long serial poem titled Remains, was published by McSweeney's in 2016.