Avoca, NY.

i.
Pastel sunshine and you
take shelter on my shoulder
in the same grass bed
where deer once snored and
where we have devoured
uncountable cosmic confections
like patchy new peregrines
open-beaked beneath
a pink and panicking worm,

recalling what it meant
to be something so trivial
and so vast.

ii.
Lay on your back
swollen with wine
and let inebriation
dip and spin you sweetly;

feel the breathlessness
of every drowning it took
for gills to evolve.

iii.
Practice outward piety
and think in sinspeak
like godly men do,
wonder quietly at what might
still be holy.

Baptized in rain from sunless Sundays
and a lack of faith in Sundays, anyway,
breathe the still-hot ash of always and cough up
from coffee-stained lungs
the flame of never.

iv.
And when we perish in the way
only the phoenix used to know,
sputter and thrash
the taste of my tobaccoed lips
from your tongue,
wipe the flecks of my toothpaste
from your bathroom mirror
and use that same screen
to watch your body
make small talk with a stranger’s.

v.
Make yours a world
where you can cut open a kiwi bird
and find only fruit inside;

remain forever uncertain
whether you were the
Sandbag or the Silk Balloon.