I drew pants out of my backpack
like a well bucket brimming pennies.
Legs upon legs tied together
in a campfire circle and sitting
on moss'd rocks, listening to rock
music, drinking Rolling Rock,
and nothing else. I pulled up
on inseams to a single black
pocket liner sixteen cents richer,
but the fire. Oh, that fire, flames whipping
weaker than slave drivers weaker
than the wind bailing low-lying
lake water to the faux Dover beach
mound of sand by the mud shore
like the crayfish were drowning.
The sand was like trampled
"welcome" mats worn-in by sidestepping
horseshoe players setting down
their tin cans by the mound.
A pitching machine on the pitcher's mound.
Machines have made the big leagues.
I quit baseball when Coach Seth castrated
my half-friends with a robot.
Some took red stitches to the face,
the lucky ones. But the fire—if you could consider
a Bunsen burner-esque flame a fire—turned
our burnt sienna bottles into burning-out beacons,
tiki torches between pine trees, street lamps
kicking off in four hours, a box of matches,
and a lightning bug's ***.