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# China
- URL: https://poetry101.love/china/
- Published: 2021-02-17T16:56:00.000Z
- Updated: 2021-03-27T16:04:30.000Z
- Description: by Dorianne Laux
- Author: Melissa Anderson
- Tags: Dorianne Laux, #Import 2026-11-04 19:11

From behind he looks like a man  
I once loved, that hangdog slouch  
to his jeans, a sweater vest, his neck  
thick-veined as a horse cock, a halo  
of chopped curls.

He orders coffee and searches  
his pockets, first in front, then  
from behind, a long finger sliding  
into the slitted denim the way that man  
slipped his thumb into me one summer  
as we lay after love, our freckled  
bodies two pale starfish on the sheets.

Semen leaked and pooled in his palm  
as he moved his thumb slowly, not  
to excite me, just to affirm  
he’d been there.

I have loved other men since, taken  
them into my mouth like a warm vowel,  
lain beneath them and watched their irises  
float like small worlds in their eyes.

But this man pressed his thumb  
toward the tail of my spine  
as if he were entering  
China, or a ripe papaya  
  
so that now  
when I think of love  
I think of this.

Laux, Dorianne. [Awake](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Awake/ryF8mwEACAAJ?hl=en&kptab=getbook&ref=poetry101.love). United States, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013.