Dear H-----,

We were such a scandal -
in their schooling mouths

our names were broiled to ash
by raw rumor and we reveled in it.

We blitzed your blonde bedroom
naked and sugared with sweet steam

& reciprocal obsession.
Each night was a fresh first date,

we measured each other with miles,
with syrup sorceries, with dizzy eyes,

until we crashed under beetle-brow
linen piles, romance shooting inside us

as the rain pooled in drum slopes
on the clay court outside the window.  

But it couldn't last. You were sailing
into harbors of high privilege,

a world of guest rooms where
I had no station. When your sister

played the green glass game with me
in your mom's kitchen she hinted

at clouded designs of friction.
She was right - when Oma died

you retreated into verdigris,
atoms decayed into smaller atoms,

& we slowed and watched in wonder
at ghost-flurries of new spring between us.

It was done, but I miss you nonetheless,
& send my best; yours, Evan.

I cast a spell in the afternoon:
a wand flicks and a cat vanishes

only to reappear chewing on a feather
with a small plastic baseball attached,

both strung on elastic cord that runs
to the black stick in my hand.

She gnaws the baseball bird,
conqueror, dominant victor

in her bedspread domain.
The other cat sullenly spies

with side eye, eager to join
but loathe to wrestle the calico.

With another spell, the feather is freed
to flight across couch, across chair,

bouncing with fat temptation
until it returns to the patchwork lair

of the huntress, who snakes a paw
to stop all renegade motions.

These are the death throes
of the baseball bird, whose final arc

ends in fang and claw on a quilt square
that purrs darkly with city sunset.

Beneath the arch,
        among the branches,
      the maunder of her eyes
           finds noir in an afterimage,
every reflection is unique,
    explicit and indivisible,
        every reflection is her,
      there she looks close
       for gracefulness,
            in the essays of her skin
               and their brazen transparencies,
         she enters into her body fable,
      the shape of her resembles
           the tenor viol: where it widens,
                  where it narrows,
                where it digresses
              and monochromes,
           she reflects a fragile geography,
             a soft cargo, but
               an inkling of hurricane,
             rendering the fault lines
          beautiful and strong,
       in supplication tomorrow's explorer
will disturb the patterns
   until she's become her own lullaby

T-----,

My guitar chattered in my hand
at the elm and oak wall of spring

as you beat drums with a covert heart,
strutting tattoos that died in ****.

But you didn't show on Saturday,
or the one after either,

leaving us drumless in the pool hall,
having to call Jimmy quick -

at sixteen we were quick to forgive.
You went into the Army

but left under a strange cloud
after an incident in the mountains.

After that at the odd house party
I watched the goodness leave you,

a lake sweltered away to motes.
After you fought Rory on the planks

of night you were unwelcome,
you vanished into mummy's threads,

hillish murmurs and silhouettes,
just an occasional twenty-year thought

I have when winter's stretch succumbs
to green oak glitters, vivid loaves of elm.

Even so, I send you my best.
-Evan