Dreaming of Light Equipment
The best sex
I never had
was in the little room behind the
redneck bar.
You left the greenhouse early.
You said Charles could do your work,
your feral smile crouched in the
shadow of your black beard.
Under the faux-chenille covers
our bodies barely touched
as you put
the machine in gear.
I was bracing for your
spring-loaded kiss
when the boy came in
with his little dog,
opened the window through
fluttering american flag curtains
and sat on the sill, talking and looking
feverishly for the clown car's coming.
We couldn't make him leave.
The father, in brown-pintoed apron, sidled
through the door that wouldn't lock and said
since the cops had done the bust
the boy had lost control.
It took hours to get rid of them.
I checked--the door still wouldn't lock.
I flipped a living mobious strip
of light switches,
watched one bulb
die as the other came on--
a machinegun monotony of annoyance.
I couldn't find the plug to pull
on the radio--talk radio--and the
woman's vulpine voice victimed
on and on--
but your body, Mike
was more beautiful than a silver trout
in a midnight blue creek,
I do remember that
shining with white inviolate light
in the uncontrollable night.
I wore a flowered halter--
you stood behind me in the mirror
and slipped it off,
your hands as smooth on the straps
as on the levers of your skid loader
where you routinely would drop
a dozen pallets on a pile
as uniform, as aligned
as a stack of pringles in a virgin tube
Every so often as
you measured my length against yours,
hydraulic waves would flutter my lids
and my eyes roll back involuntarily,
an ecstatic irritant because
I badly wanted to see how it was done.
O Mike, if I'd only known
how smooth, how hot your skin, how deep
the sanctuary
under the camouflage, the
erasure of your work clothes--
I would never have
married that loser.
~June 2013
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