How to Make Love in a Foreign Language

Pull the shades.  Darkness is a great aid
to speaking well.  If this is wrong, your lover
will let you know with a gentle tug.

Begin with verbs – “rumble,” “jettison,”
“bend,” “explore.”  Roll them in your mouth
like marbles or small stones, let their juices

sluice along your lips and cheeks and down
your radiant chin.  If you stumble, look
away.  Remember, a lisp is charming

in a foreign tongue.  A wise lover will
smile, lift your head with one crooked finger
and whisper a secret name.  Carve

this on the inside of your eyelids so that it flames
when the world turns dark.  Learn the words
for “sheets” and “fluid,” and “grass” and “wine.”

When pleasure becomes so great you forget
to breathe, relax.  You have become a silver
horse drinking at a cool spring, everything wet

and sweet and out of your control, grammar
of stars and leaves and wind, rhythm of fish
pulsing upriver, and the leaping syntax of flesh.

Steve Klepetar