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The power of touch: Once, in November – a poem by Anis Mojgani

You get into the shower and ask
Will you keep me company?
I sit on the toilet’s lid
and while you wash yourself and water
at the same time the ferns the spider plant
the pothos vining over the tile
marvelling out loud how you love
to water them while showering
I read to you from a book I once owned
only just this morn having bought again
because I didn’t want to write any poems today
but I did today want to read them
to let what light touches what grasses that in me run wild
to let that light happen by reading to another
poems that once led me to the ways
my heart might bigger itself
poems of the sea and the earth and the calling that comes from
all that wells and springs from love and love
so I read the wells to you
say aloud the springs
with you on the other side
of the shower curtain – your body behind
it looking like a pastel from Degas
with the window’s light holding your shoulders and I
trembling the Chilean’s words into the air
read and read aloud and out loud you
pull the veil aside
and with the drops of water
on your mouth you
leaning past the vines scrolling over the wall
out the shower to touch
your hand to my face
thumb upon my cheek
palm cupping my jaw
touching my skin like a silk to dress yourself in
lifting my chin and lowering yours
down to me kissing
your wet lips to mine
leaving my heart breathing
behind its own jungle of wet leaves
softest tongue to my teeth
the water of you on my mouth

Anis Mojgani performing in Portland, Oregon.
Anis Mojgani performing in Portland, Oregon. Photograph: Anthony Pidgeon/Redferns

• Anis Mojgani is an American spoken-word poet, and the current Poet Laureate of Oregon