Those first few times, fumbling 
fingers tentative, yet urgent to decipher 
the lexicon of lover’s braille, to map 
the stratigraphy of layers of clothing, 
to undo the impediments of hook 
and eyelet, of snap and zip and button, 
to skim the expanse of sultry, silken skin, 
to skate finger pads along winding paths 
of exploration, over swell and swale, 
approaching, receding, promising, 
withholding, sliding, almost succumbing, 
conducting the duet of each other’s breaths, 
the whispered entreaties, the twinges, 
the breathless affirmations, the lifting into, 
the engulfing, the steeplechase heartbeats 
stretching beyond the final turn into 
the straightaway, neck and neck, each 
desperate to discover with the other 
all these untrodden shores. 

Roy J. Beckemeyer’s

latest poetry collection is Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019). Stage Whispers (Meadowlark Books, 2018) won the 2019 Nelson Poetry Book Award. Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press, 2018) comprises ekphrastic poems inspired by modern artists’ depictions of angels. His first book, Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014), was a 2015 Kansas Notable Book. He recently co-edited (with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg) Kansas Time+Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Little Balkans Press, 2017). His poetry has been nominated for Pushcart (2015 and 2020) and Best of the Net (2018) awards, and was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019.

Beckemeyer serves on the editorial boards of Konza Journal and River City Poetry. A retired engineer and scientific journal editor, he is also a nature photographer who, in his spare time, researches the mechanics of insect flight and the Paleozoic insect fauna of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Alabama. He lives in Wichita, Kansas, where he and his wife recently celebrated their 59th anniversary.

Please visit author’s website for more information about his books, as well as links to interviews and readings (scroll down his About page for the link-list).

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The Color of Blessings in MacQ (Issue 5, October 2020)

⚡ Featured Artist in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019); showcasing Beckemeyer’s poetry, prose poetry, and insect photography

⚡ Words for Snow, a prose poem in KYSO Flash (Issue 9, Spring 2018), which was selected for reprinting in The Best Small Fictions 2019