You have real smooth skin like real varnished
tables. I see the way your lips overhang mine
like the eaves on a porch; can’t we just be
a Midwest summer instead of falling pines?

It is Nebraska. Oklahoma as you panhandle
me with hands as rough as the rusted pole
of your basketball hoop. It is Iowa; I dip
when you bend and this river is our wrist

hooked in your jeans loop and spilling
to your knees. I want to be your knees
when you run like junipers. Don’t your branches
whistle, cat-call, tumble from your clarinet lips?

I want them on me, on mine, on ours, on television
Sundays and on concrete sometimes, and sometimes
in the back of my father’s Model T catching dust
like some exquisite game played for keeps.

I found your licorice-tied shoes caught in the mud
and I thought of your feet bare and dried—
how they always carried you far like real
boys escaping real dreams. It isn’t your fault;

some days, I only know front porch steps,
the lazy fireflies and the fawning cats—
never the maddening quiet of the overpasses,
the interstates, the girls with their convertibles.

03/24/2008

Author's Note: come back, come back.

Posted on 03/24/2008
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