it’s two in the afternoon
you’re gone now
and I’m lying in bed
rolling in the high of you
my eyelids heavy
tender places swollen
I haven’t had a drink in years
but in this moment I am drunk
and dizzy from our dance
I’d be reeling
if I could stand Read more…
Have you ever had a fantasy come true
but you didn’t know it was your fantasy
until some time after you got it
because this fantasy was so far
from what you ever imagined wanting for yourself
that your conscious mind wouldn’t dream of it
so it simmered for years or decades
in your subconscious
every so often surfacing
as the inexplicable attraction to someone wholly inappropriate
in which case you hurried to cram it back into your mental basement
slamming the door as you ran to safety
After that it only came out in dreams
where you
I been killin’ snakes all my life
copperheads and water moccasins, mostly
and every so often, when I’m ridin’ in the brush
a rattler’ll slide on out and spook my mule
Don’t matter what kind, a’course
I shoot ’em all with my sawed off shotgun
or use whatever else might be handy
shovel works just fine
I kill them snakes without a thought
Man’s got to protect his family
They’s always killin’ to be done on a farm
killin’ you got to do
killin’ you don’t ever want to do
Read more…
Clearly
she didn’t want to be there
fielding tourists at the Visitor Information Center
Siloam Springs, Arkansas
Boredom dripped out
in her sighs
and fingers grazing tired
across a map
here a river, there a lake
everywhere a good time
Miss Arkansas Information at last became
inexplicably animated as I neared the exit:
Tourism is very important to Arkansas
It’s the number two, uh …
Industry?
Why yes, right after poe’try
I perked clean out of my interstate daze
Nobody told me poetry was big business in Arkansas
Poetry? I repeated, incredulous
Oh my, yes! she puffed
Chicken, turkey, all
I know very little about you
I know you are a famous writer
that your work is extraordinary
I know where you live
that it is half a continent away from me
I know that I want you and you want me
and you are married
and I am
hot
We both know that you will not
betray your wife
So when we slid naked into the motel pool at 3 AM
when we did that
I didn’t know anything anymore
And when you massaged my feet and you told me this
is how you fell
in love with