On Sunday Morning

New Age music drones from your retro kitchen
radio as we talk through the aftermath of our first
and only date. Over fair trade coffee, organic scones
and hand-rolled cigarettes, we convince ourselves
there is no spark between us. You claim to know
me too well, say our familiar ease makes it seem
as if we've already been married for fifteen years.
My jeans stick to the rug burns on my knees,
your robe, I imagine, to the raw spot on your tailbone.
It's good we're lying to ourselves about all this
in a way that allows us to laugh when I remind you
we at least had one hell of a honeymoon.

I rise to shrug on my leather and leave us as is.
You rise with me, as if I'd just asked you to snatch
up my lapels and kiss me with all the passion
of our failure. The blind date that began last night
with us shooting pool in a steak house bar and my eyes
devouring the unfurling of your long body beneath
that smoky cone of light you leaned through ends
right here with the play of our shadows pressing
into one another along your yellow kitchen wall.

There is who we try to be and there is who we are:
a man with one foot over the threshold of a door
that opens into this goodbye; a woman chewing
on his lip and saying everything he wants to say
so much better as she whispers to him between kisses
I never should have told you that I don't eat meat
or date men who wear leather.



(first published in Slipstream # 28)

I can see no one body I can see

no one can see no
one can see no one
can see no one can
see no one can see
no one can

I can see no body I can
see no body I can see
no body I can see no
body I can see no body
I can

can I see no one body
I see no one body I can
see no one body can I
see no one body
can I

see no one body I can see
no one body I can see no
one body I can see no one
body I can see no one body
can I see
I can

Three Pigments

of the imagination
prone to gray matters
there is this much to say

besides.

*

the red the bull sees
is the blood of matadors

kneeling


*

white Nike's thrown bolo
over the telephone wire
somebody's answering

a prayer

the first and last things x remembers

Cracking the door
on a back lit face.
Nimbus voice.
A fist final as god.