I listen to Posing for Cars and imagine going home to you

by Jo Clark

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and like anything true, it’s a bit embarrassing –
these lengths I’ll go to conjure you. 
It’s not a strange place to look, the guitar 
solo that burns until the very end – shy
of three minutes, I measure my days 
in this interval – 
   sonic portrait
of your absence and then, and then.
It pinches to imagine you in any way – love or not – 
the stitch under my lung I find only 
when walking beneath the overpass, 
reverb in my ear, iron in my mouth.
 I imagine you here, 
   in the meat of me – 
opalescent skin between thumb & palm 
bring you to my mouth, let my teeth skim
but never bite. I don’t need to have you, 
the wanting is enough.
   If desire is stuck
(amygdala spooned by hippocampus snug)
then the urge to run both to and from you
is fixed in the back of my skull, your hand 
finding purchase, fingers braided, prepped 
to pull. But you’re not really there, 
migraine aura itching into occipital nerve –
not even here, in the heave of my throat.
Your voice in mine, tongue the stranger
in my mouth,
   there’s nothing
to sing along to, these last moments shaking 
out, before I play it all again. My wet heart 
a kickdrum. My wet heart a starting gun.

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Jo Clark is a poet born and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A first-year MFA candidate at Syracuse University, she reads poetry & non-fiction for Salt Hill Journal. Her work can be found in Volume Poetry, UVa Today, and Prospectus, amongst other places.