Su(bdu)ction
Najka Altazy
to my first mate, beyond the smallest hours,
When swirling blankets yawn to draw us down,
a vortex draughting sleep to deeper bowels,
a trickster murmur hides behind your frown
and rises fierce into a crimson growl.
If lunar turns engorge the flowing tide
and bear our forms along til it recedes,
my heaving tack will match you, stride for stride.
Athwart my beam, I'll stem your keening need.
I catch your whispered pleading through my skin,
as sliding arms are swimming through the warm
to seek a sunken treasure: love therein,
where streams collide to make a sudden storm.
And when we find each other hip to hip,
we squeeze an ocean dry then, drip by drip.
Najka Altazy
Najka Altazy has been an archivist and librarian at America's largest archive, the world's biggest museum complex, and the most extensive repository of Shakespeare-related materials in the universe. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia with a lady, a girl, and a boy, only one of whom is a dog.