Susan R. Williamson: Two Poems

Perfect Score | Why, In the Restaurant, Our Bodies Were Humming

Perfect Score

You learn early, when the teacher’s voice rattles
to a stop, and she looks up over her glasses, past

her nose, hand in mid-air, eyebrows raised, expects
the class to fill in the missing phrase. All the voices

chime with what it is that fits. You get the piece of paper,
line drawn mid-sentence, mid-chained alphabet, a perfectly

lettered hand. What’s wanted here, clearly, is to fill in
the blank. So you take your crayon, or pencil, steady #2,

mark down what you think belongs, what your little head
imagines makes each of the pieces fit together. Sometimes

the teacher, with red pencil, marks your answers wrong.
Any wonder, when, years later, at last you touch, when

your bodies come together, and waves like undertow, suck
away the sand underfoot, how this training comes in handy.

His words fall flat, but when the magic drags you out, it isn’t
hard, is it? To fill in what is really missing — tell yourself if

you get this right, you’ll pass with a perfect score — even
if empty spaces still need answers, this test you yourself

have created, bones and flesh, a touch, musical
words to fill this open-mouthed blank.

Why, In the Restaurant, Our Bodies Were Humming

Not for the usual reasons, but for those too:
counterpoint of pheromone, ritual frictions,

the near imperceptible brush of your finger
against mine as the bread was passed from

one to the other at the table, and then,
all I could see were centerpiece flowers,

petals and fronds swirling in a candlelight blur.
I couldn’t even flinch when a sparkle of lemon

squeezed over a plate reached my wrist,
its fragrance of sunlight suggesting other fruit

things that swim, blue-green mists of a wave
as it limns hard sand — or sun-baked skin.

You can’t ask me to blame the menu, or
the vintage wine. I always leave that choice

to you, trust it will be an exquisite pairing.
Don’t say it’s because of the thousands of words

we’ve used, written down alone, whispered
to ourselves — to each other, under the wide

light-pricked night, more often, an ebony canopy
of dark melodies stretched out between us.

It’s not due to the emanations of the same
luminaries we see, from opposite directions,

presiding over the miles. Say instead, it is because
we were once, long ago, mysteriously tuned together,

taut strings bowed by silver moonlight — that we
played a rare music left behind in Eden

before anyone had the slightest idea
of what it was possible to lose.

Poet's Biography:

Susan R. Williamson serves as associate publisher of Tupelo Press and is editor-in-chief of Streetlight Magazine. She works at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville. Previously, her work has appeared in Lucid Oona, Lumina, Streetlight, Lagniappe, and LINK, as a prize winner in the U.Va. Medical Center poetry competition.