Poem by Susan Deer Cloud

"Toxic Cocktail" by Cindy Williams



One Night, Two Poets

discovered the countries of themselves
sharing wine in what appeared to be a garret.
“How did we get here?” – they howled
between kisses, twenty stories high
in an American city. A panther stared
out the window, remembering itself
before it became extinct. In Sky World
Grandmother Moon spun around as if
men had torn into her again, knocked
fullness off balance.

The poets drank naked.

The woman poet smiled, “Baudelaire wrote poems
while balling his black mistress in their Paris garret.
I’ve longed to try that with an Indian man.”
Paper possibilities flared through the window, pens
flowered like eagle feathers inside their hands. The man
let the wine bottle glisten to floor. The woman flung
clay cup at ceiling, wine laughing as Aurora Borealis
across winter paint. She spread her legs like wings
in a parallel universe. He grew a second body of light,
scattering stars inside her flying. Stars blossomed
into constellation. Nine months later
they gave their poem a name.