Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

It recommended
soft porn, as gentle prodding and petting parent
to parent might calm and soothe the kid.

we drove on through
the blue seal of morning as the turbines
turned and winked out their hearts

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

I count my homes—
those of my scattered youth
the sanctuary of our young family
the intermittent rest stops
of apartments and vacations.

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

this is what I want you to to see:
leaves falling because it is too late for them not to

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

I am still waiting for the lion

I have an axe
with hearts gashed

Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat

It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows?
Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.