The Chinese concubine feeling has left and the
sky hovers like the preparation of a revolutionary speech.
You, my long walk with all that expectation
the sexy lunches, thousands of them,
and then all that religion of eroticism.
Beneath the squeeze on my heart is a stranglehold.
You, like a little Italian porcelain village that’s all over the
shop window saying admire this image of foreverness.

The red scarf is factory-made but silky
and it’s what I’d flutter over your face if you were here
and it would be cheap greasy hypnotism, my own malarkey
and we’d be on the southside, at the boat docks, and
I’d kiss you beside the stretch of a Russian grain ship, its
hammer and sickle like the sending out of rescue choppers.

Connie Deanovich , Formerly Communist Love Sonnet