THEIR NAME ON EVERY PAGE
Dotted outline, their face in narrow fields
commissions clovers. The clothes I wore
In the panoply of streetlights a streetlight sifts
through drafts of my attention
maybe I’m not sweet enough for this
anymore than oneself to a friend. They mouth their
reasons into my collarbone; I read their
penis my hand a tactile map of the coastline
no way home. At daylight’s eastern edge
the sky pink and treetops black are crossed
they are peas, a latticed generation; then
the leafs will register pink against black sky.
I came out wanting; I would have let them
drive, mile markers the number of times I
stepping in and out as I slept. They cut lucidity
for fondness, long occasional thoughts into the
they leapt out at me; they lent me with perfect intention
books; I was locked in
looked into: I hacked into their tree.
OR WAS IT ABOUT NOTHING AT ALL
Furrowed clouds, the half-lit yard, eventually;
sometimes to ask the wrong questions. It wasn’t
(wasn’t it) about what was right, what was left
of the companion season; was it
If I were successful — if we were success
would you find time for the next few months
years… wouldn’t I describe myself as
light against the railing, and my ears (eyes
out of season) as ditches — wine-colored mud
in my hair, behind the house… this shade of green
the evening in drifts and starts, fireflies damp
from the ground, or some part of me
taken up years ago; could I say that?
thought that it was what I wanted — you pointed
out that we have the same haircut (we don’t)
and I took that to say what you wanted, whether
or not you meant it, or just that the tree was enough
to make sense of the rain, the wide orange streetlights
flirting with recommendations, the electrical substation.