Poems by Eric Dunham

By Eric Dunham

Eulogy to My Temptation, or, God Bless the Turk!

In the October dusk your body became as shapeless as the wind,

And like a craftsman’s hands sculpting creation, you disturbed

The particles that hung around us and made the trees gossip with hushed breaths. 

Maybe we were that genesis, born from some unattainable deity

Under whom there is no choice but to genuflect—

Then you blew away, leaving only the damp city’s silent gleam inked on my skin,

And I was but a sole eyewitness with a parochial mind.

I know very little now.

You tossed that word around so carelessly;

By the poet’s station, in your messages, voiceless with your fingers,

And every time it hit me an impression was branded hot in my throat

And pressed down on me until the quiet pop, and I could inhale your words again— 

It was a blossoming ache, the crest of sorrow that comes after repentance.

The way your head was thrown back as if by bombs, our jokes became creeds

To be cultivated until we crumbled into our own shadows in fits of laughter—

A gold plated halo pooled around your head, the café warmth waited to be cracked open,

You do not see that love is not the message but the pigeon’s flight back home.

Is this saudade or just a delusion?

Perhaps I am just a faceless acolyte, or a limerent thief in the making.

I map the marble capillaries you were driven home from the hospital on;

I pretend the passing metro is the rumble of airplanes that sinks quietly

Into your sober hometown streets like morning rain—

Lean your head on my shoulder again, please. 

You spoke in honeyed colors our first time meeting.

Your ramblings flickered like bulbs and throbbed into one another.

I responded with murmurs that escaped out into the murky dim haze;

Looking at us, one would see only a sweet, sharp, sticky, holy island 

Of fluorescence yelling against the wet, leaden eyes of the night.

I still mistake the short tug of an evening breeze for your coquettish arm by the riverside,

And hear your rhythmic exhales ticking, filling up the classroom like an unsatisfied ghost. 

This reminiscing is a tale to be ripped into because all paths forwards now are made of paper—

Keep those vestiges of your other exaltments hidden under your turtleneck,

You said you enjoyed the rain with only me but not to dream about you,

No stoic could possibly prepare themselves for this. 

Lord, what a contrarian I’ve become.

This familiar anguish that resembles brightness sinks faintly on the skin, like 

Cold water nibbling on the lakeshore in heavenly summertime, and fit on me as if tailored,

And these thoughts are an anchor pulling the strings down and 

This gravity is nauseating and I can’t help but look and—

Are you thinking of me or him?

There is certainly no virtue here, it has shriveled up with the autumn leaves.

Reformer, revenant, provocateur, my art of idolatry has nothing to do with you—

It’s a predictable and acrimonious story, a heresy in spite of your blessing,

A long, dry thirst that pumps in the ears, a dwindling but hopeful grief.

My wasted honor starts in daylight and ends in that brown iris.

Take this adulation, be it real or not, and give me yours.

The infidel holds the muzzle steady and takes the shot. 

My curtains are blown open and you, a long haired phantom, squirm your way in—

The sounds go clang, pitter, patter, crush, ping, fizzle, hiss, twist, screech, pinch and break,

Berating, buzzing, bending, bleeding, bouncing off the walls of this bedroom which 

Is more of an ample heart than a full body, until the commotion settles on a cold pillow

And the celebration comes to an end. 

Thick, beady raindrops slick like insects across the shattered window, 

Its strewn shards reflect the pale face of a sinner looking up at you—

My eyes saw Bathsheba in the dark!

Waterbaby!

From La Barceloneta, flecks of ships glinted like pearl earrings bursting from the surface.

Clouds dipped their fingers into the still water, overhead gulls flocked and squawked, and

I slipped on and off my skin, peddling myself to Apollo’s wily hands like everybody else here—

Thin layers of fabric sticking to our forms, unspoken details hiding open secrets,

The oil canvas spilled out from the sky onto my chest and I almost turned into the air itself.

The earth was devoured up so fast that there was no way to ease one’s way in—

My porcelain feet crumbled into a drowned pebbled carpet, and at once I saw the sun

Painted on the sea a thousand times.

The blue thief held a relieving luminosity in its girth and I, 

Like the sun beams suspended in the water, underwent a cold crucifixion,

An offering to the waves until the vastness became so empty that I was overflowing. 

White horses galloped overhead, and beaded towers bobbed up and down like

Dark arms of seaweed bellying towards the light, hanging from the surface until the tension slits.

The whale breaches from the Mediterranean and then it’s me who slumps back in

With glass from a swallowed, salted paradise pouring from the mouth.

The currents pump like bullets towards the beach, 

Wounding then licking up footprints from the sand— 

The sea is a father beguiling and expelling his disciples. 

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