When We Need to by Mona Lisa Saloy

When We Need to . . .

By Mona Lisa Saloy

When I need you to hold me, and

you lean just inches away, maybe

I can't tell you how I need to, sometimes.

Sounds easy that one can just say something

to someone, but some words come like bricks in

your throat, and the brow bleeds, and female parts

butterfly, and I surrender to your need for

a hug in your eyes when you can't tell

me, but I can hear it in your purr some-

times, in your pouring over me like

honey, hot and golden, touching inch by inch,

finger to fold in heat, and the way those

chestnut eyes follow me like an airplane,

when we need to be held, and we can't say.

* * * * *

update 10 July 2008

Mona Lisa Saloy is associate professor of English and Director of creative writing at Dillard University (before Katrina). She won the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for this collection. She has also won fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the United Negro College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her poems have appeared in anthologies, magazines, journals, and film. She received her PhD in English and MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University and her MA in creative writing and English from San Francisco State University. Displaced by hurricane Katrina, Saloy is a visiting associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Washington for the 2005/2006 academic year. Mona Lisa Saloy Bio