Twenty-Seven

This is drafty modernity—
where our bike trails
are scabs and icy gravel

where my credit cards have been strewn
to freeze and brittle
in the van
stranded frantically
after nervous scatological
moment visible to no one
at the Gottfredson
exit.

No one sees me now.

I never smoke when I am in love—
I get fat and sleep late
in the twin beds of my feeders
as they go to work their jobs
in the mornings

where the rolling pin of my body
revolved hot
in the elastic snapping of
sentenced sexed fitted sheet corners.

Your roommate had one eye
and perhaps an envy for our love
but even she can not see me
now—

one cigarette a day now and
a wimp even in self-destruction.

The four athletic balls
of various shape
from 8th grade bazaar and cereal
promotion
invariably brittling in the heavy
yard of November cliches
still persist
in skin and temperature
but I will never
gather them.

I wrote a few poems
in our summer
with the walls of Indian buffet
between us—
waiting daily for you and
the fray of your
jean shorts to rise and dissolve
higher and higher
as the dry cleaners spun
for a purpose in days
and nights around the alarm clock
of the sun slinging us
for one year only.

I snuck them in greasy black wires
through the crabapple blossoms
and only now can I sense
all that I snuck
with no notion of any need
for sneaking.

Remember the silly constructs I toiled on
in the carport—
bathed in coffee and the heat rash

just nervous and nonchalant
for your presence again?

You should see how bare
all the outstretching reaches now.

One night in the beginning:
in the attic's pinnacle
from where we started
from which we descended
with your wild smell and pubis
and delirious grinning
you confessed the demonic things
that knocked you out
asleep and hot atop me.

I think then is when I closed my eyes
but still so awake
in love—
off-put
by love.

I cannot recall being cold once
last winter

it took the knife and the nightmare
and the disposable cameras
impossible to develop or destroy
labeled pornographic with
Scotch tape

it took the mental collapse
of your grandpa's north
billboard barn
with the sad lone stallion
and billy goat marriage
where we fucked in the field
of loud motor paranoia
and paradise
that exist solely in the sun's
tendency for blinking

it took Lake Huron and the circles
of ankle bones
of flea market coins
of nipples in swimsuits
and circles in circles
in circles.

I burned it all with friction
of paper cuts

of safety pins and dry cleaning
tags
because you asked me to
terribly.

It took all that to open again
my eyes from the attic:

how I'd piss blindly in the night
toward the sink with the dishes
and fruit fly
fermentation
of all our good times

sneaking and scheming
amateurishly
in the dark
but always to return
underpants or not
to our
naked sleeping fusion
off-put but horribly safe
and lucky
I thought.

You should see how bare
and high
the outstretching reaches now.

I turn 27 in two days
my father feeds me and
the election and the NFL
and the shooter on 96

the hurricane and the veering
distance
of dying apart
from your darling girlishness
and darkness and precise
pin location
dusked over
like the thinnest crabapple twigs
that impale darkness out of thirst

like the sweet bristles of your pretty mole
before you'd shave it
sneakily in the shower
when soap was in my eyes.

No leaves and no eyelids left
but I hope you're having fun

before it all shuts down for good.