Midlands

beyond your porchlight’s
dull peel
I hunch
by your jade’s
white clumps
where the rain
claws out
the furious scents.

even if
beneath the birch
you clung
to me in the clinging
of your wet garb,
you would not feel
the funnel of cool water,
your breasts the aqueduct
to the navel’s
velvet curl—

you would not see
the buds breaking
their green crusts
in the dark—

not the moist flock
of droplets
in my hair;
the spicy loam.

only
the clinging
of the wet garb,
your clothes informing
your body of its shape.

January Hanging

He grapples
your body under the persimmons.
your hand remarks
his buttocks’ frenzied loaves.

I envy his ebullient strain
and your valiant
dissatisfaction, note
the narcoleptic
drift
of your eyes toward
the red muscular fruit
dangling in red fetal curls.

your eyes on the fleshy red buds,
and your thirst for them.

Premature

I couldn’t get us a table
at that place my dad recommended downtown
palo alto
tends to be a hopping place.
I looked around at the big suits leaning
gymnastlike on their tables strafing thirty dollar steaks.
I couldn’t buy you anything that good.

this was after we raided the garden
of rodin and his rude-figured limbs,
mouths without lips rising half-reptilian
as if from wombs of mud.
I took
a couple pictures of you,
I wish I’d taken them now instead,
I’ve got a better camera and know
a little better
what I’m doing.