Asleep You Become a Continent

(Francisco X. Alarcón) asleep you become a continent— undiscovered, mysterious, long, your legs mountain ranges encircling valleys, ravines night slips past your eyelids, your breath the swaying of the sea, sprawled across the bed like a dolphin washed ashore, your mouth is the mouth of a sated volcano, O fragrant timber, how do you burn? you are so near, and yet so far as you doze like a lily at my side, I undo myself and invoke the moon— I’m a dog watching over your sleep