I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone by Stephen Dunn
I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone
Stephen DunnThe dogs greet me, I descend
into their world of fur and tongues
and then my wife and I embrace
as if we’d just closed the door
in a motel, our two girls slip in
between us and we’re all saying
each other’s names and the dogs
Buster and Sundown are on their hind legs,
people-style, seeking more love.
I’ve come home wanting to touch
everyone, everything; usually I turn
the key and they’re all lost
in food or homework, even the dogs
are preoccupied with themselves,
I desire only to ease
back in, the mail, a drink,
but tonight the body-hungers have sent out
their long-range signals
or love itself has risen
from its squalor of neglect.
Everytime the kids turn their backs
I touch my wife’s breasts
and when she checks the dinner
the unfriendly cat on the dishwasher
wants to rub heads, starts to speak
with his little motor and violin–
everything, everyone is intelligible
in the language of touch,
and we sit down to dinner inarticulate
as blood, all difficulties postponed
because the weather is so good.
ABOUT STEPHEN DUNN
Poet Stephen Dunn was born on June 24, 1939 in New York City. The first of his family to go to college, Dunn earned a BA from Hofstra University on a basketball scholarship and later worked in advertising. Dunn attended the New School and earned an MA in creative writing from Syracuse University, where he studied with Philip Booth, Donald Justice, and W.D. Snodgrass. Dunn was the author of numerous books of poetry, including Pagan Virtues (2019); Keeper of Limits (2015); Lines… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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