#6. [The Figure Caller] must have an unerring geometric sense.
          —Dr. Lloyd “Pappy” Shaw

Mark your corners and take the floor

caught in the lobby’s indiglow / finger
          prints ghost the glass / the gold door

          handle worn / dull like your storm
door when a sun / square slides over the white

Count One and Two and Three and Four

aluminum the shallow / X relief
          where diags form / triags where

          each edge casts / a shadow / you
thumb the handle the way / you thumb the black

Honor your partner honor your side

button / a reflected torso in both
          doors’ windexed glass / when we meet

          like this here / in another
hotel we never / know our luck to find

One’s a phantom and ain’t no bride

a single queen / bed or what looks the desk
          clerk will give neck / ties loosened /

          one room / left with double beds /
we take it / pay / I rub / the grey key card’s

Step to the middle and take his hand

inset / arrow as the clerk prattles on
          about the continental

          breakfast we will / skip / your hand
brushes my thigh my gut / preps for the drop

You’ve formed an X now allemande

when the elevator / stops loose flutter
          like speeding down those hilly

          Pennsylvania / roads but mixed
with that inner / itch the a-spot pulsates /

Stand side by side now don’t delay

your eyes burn like bronzed / leaves hall camera
          checked / at the door / we do not

          rip clothes off or worse cut / straight
to sex but linger / on button on snap

One step behind that’s the tandem way

mirror to each / other as we shimmy
          off a sleeve as we unzip

          and step from dress / pants no words
whispered in that pause / my lips / list their lone

Turn and face your partner’s eyes

esses again / again across your lips’
          soft lines / lines erased by tongue

          and teeth / how else to say / this
to pull all those nights into one / distilled

It shouldn’t be hard you’re both the same size

image / charcoal / framed print above the bed
          line edge smeared a hint / of thumb

          print / lines within lines shaded
blended all to suggest a pear / sitting

Let’s play arky rotate the square

in a bowl half / there half not upper side
          one with the white / paper where

          the light hits / it from sources
outside the frame pear / in bowl suggested

The belles turn beaus and the beaus don’t care

like our cradled bodies streaks / breaking flesh
          breaking / open flesh’s edge

          our edges diffuse / scumbled /
a smudged fit beneath this hotel / room print

Smudge those angles with a docey-doe

The square’s now a circle so off you go