Steven Bradbury        Melrose       (Danny Lawless)
On the Eros of Their Conversation

If this is where we make our bed, he mused,
apropos of nothing they had said
but in answer to the latent question 
around which they had played for hours like children 
let from school, as they reveled in their near-
animal pleasure in the rough and tumble 
of each other’s conversation, so be it, 
for is this not love’s sweetest part? The gentle 
art of letting your hair down over a verbal 
pratfall, of falling into the arms of a ribald pun,
of peeling the layers off a juicy allusion that leaves 
you lying in such a state of linguistic undress 
that you begin to wonder where this talk will 
take you, when all the words are finally gone.