Desperate Message 3 (Desire) by Mark Svenvold

Their hands have found in each other the impossibility of bodies. They gather what they can. Here, and here, in the tangled turn, in the soft, suede taper of the neck, in desire, they are wise to the body’s overflowing reticence: nothing is ever enough is the joke that keeps giving itself to us, the air calm, the trees lime-colored, the hands, like tourists without visas, cameras without film, busily, purposefully taking picture after picture after picture.

From “Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets,” edited by Nicholas Christopher (An Anchor Book/Doubleday: $9.95, paper; 238 pp.). Christopher writes of Mark Svenvold that he “lives in Seattle, Wash., where he is studying English literature and Spanish at the University of Washington. His work has appeared in various magazines, including Catalyst, MSS (Manuscripts), and Fine Madness. He is completing a full-length manuscript, entitled Desperate Messages. “ 1989 Nicholas Christopher. Reprinted by permission of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.