MICHAEL J. OPPERMAN
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              Still Life with Passion


                  Each night now is a luminance rising against itself.
                  We look for our own contrast thrown aloft into a cloud
                              of mosquitoes, or wrapped in a damp sheet
                              angled across the bottom of the bed.

                  We struggle, fingers inside of each other, a fish is burning
                              in a pan next door—there is no stopping the change:
                              the charring scales, the melting of the flesh. Soon
                              the fish will be nothing but a ripe jelly coating the cast iron.

                  But/

                  we are still, our lust has left us, with our fingers hooked,
                                eyes sharp and searching. The breeze

                  catches a leaf of the geranium, and then nothing. Nothing.
                                Over and over.