Bob King

Time comes closest to stopping when your bare chest connects to their bare back, the comforter, in its hypoallergenic polyester silkiness, still carrying the coolness from the windows-open blue afternoon, & for now, it’s evenly spread, yet slowly warming, & the skin’s layered textbook diagram is colorful under a microscope: epidermis & swaying-like-a-wheat-field follicles almost snap click together, as if organic Legos. That air around that weld keeps warming, threatening more heat than most could bear & three choices present: slide back over, alone, to your vast ocean of mattress, or two, slip down the covers & let the ceiling fan do its goosepimple duty, or, lastly, to stay right there, allow the heat to simmer to boil to bake to broil like a field in the sun all the way to the horizon, which stays distant & just out of reach, even as you keep walking toward it.

Bob King

is an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University at Stark. His recent poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Olney Magazine, Crab Apple Literary, Words & Sports Quarterly, Erato Magazine, coalitionworks, Gone Lawn, Moss Puppy Magazine, The Daily Drunk, Don’t Submit, Full House Literary, Curio Cabinet Magazine, Moot Point Magazine, The Gorko Gazette, Drunk Monkeys, Paddler Press, Aôthen Magazine, The Purposeful Mayonnaise, Spare Parts Literary Magazine, & Tears, & Bullshit Lit. He lives in Fairview Park, Ohio, with his wife & daughters.

Twitter: @KingRobertJ