Poem/"The Interim"

I admit it: I've been Googling myself lately. I feel so ashamed. But! I have a good reason, I swear. I've been hunting the web for my poems that have been published over the years in order to put together a c.v. for the work placement I have to do for my Masters and for PhD applications. I thought I'd re-post them here, starting with this one published in Forth Magazine, based in Los Angeles, in the summer of 2009.

The Interim 

A space, a square –
you rearrange my skin with one hand,
complicating the gesture while simplifying my frame.

A space, a square where time has been cancelled,
stripped of its original function.
The interim?

You sit in your desk chair,
it is another factor, something else to add to your formula.
How would I look on your graph?

Your expression, it expresses nothing,
it is devoid of meaning, there are no implications.

Did you ever stop to think how much science there is in your gestures?
How much architecture in your expressions?

I get the sense that you are emerging,
in the process of becoming.
The interim?
You amplify.

I climb onto your lap while you are busy typing and you tell me this

You peel me back;
unfold me with just one arm, just one eye.
Open me.
Why don’t you play with the air between open and closed,
shelter and wideness,
angles and curves?

Instead you create a space, an absence of endings and possibilities.

They have a quote from me explaining the poem, which I don't remember at all, but it sounds like something I'd say - which is really the only thing I can go on with a memory as horrific as mine):

“This is one in a series of experimental poems about sex that explores the space where sex meets science and love meets math. It's about the overwhelming loneliness one can experience when physically close to another human being.”