Ex-virgins wake up in the morning
And they cry
Feeling no different
At having lost
Their intangibility

She fell asleep thinking not of her
Boyfriend, but of the moon
Like the tides, her
Passions were tied to its
Waxing and waning
At its fullest she could
See around corners
Identify people not just by
Sight, but by scent
She watched, enraptured, as her
Fingernails grew and sharpened before
Her eyes
And for maybe
Not quite the first time
She felt alive

The strange symptoms
Of her youth
The pawprints in the
Yard, the lust for Jack
London, the undercooked meat
Calling the moon by her
Boyfriend's name
When her phone was ringing
With his number lighting up the screen
Calling her boyfriend
The moon
And thinking about sinking her
Teeth into him
The people who loved her
Pushing for a lock up
Questioning her sanity
The people who loved her
Trying to understand

It was all so
Unsettling, it was all so
Mindbending how much louder the
Wild called to her
And how it knew her name
Without any introductions
And naturally her instincts
Took over
And supernaturally her instincts
Wanted flesh

Finally it was just two
Wolf hearts
Beating in the
Dark, all those wild
Thoughts racing across
America and destiny was
Manifesting itself faster
Than they could chase after it

She had turned him and
There was no going back
Just forward into that
Rabid
Unnatural
Unknown
Forward into that
Toothy grin

Under a big tent
Topped with stars and
Smelling of elephants
A couple of daredevils
Toss in their trailer
Restless in the Midwest

Their golden suits shimmer
In the Iowa half light
The cornstalks talk in
The breezes passing by
At night the daredevils whisper
About what it would be like to really fly
And not just on the trapeze
They kiss goodnight and dream of impossibilities

Times are changing
Since the war it's been mostly women
In the crowds the circus draws
They scream at the lions
Roar at the strongman
Gasp and applaud the two daredevils
Enthusiastically
Happily
Making love in the sky

Times are changing
Since his number came up
She's been lonely
Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri
Her gold suit is covered in farm dust
Growing nothing much
Her husband is on a bombing raid over Nazis
He's finally flying
Helped by an airplane
B52s and bloodshot eyes
No longer dreaming of impossibilities but
Missing his safety net

Since he left she's been thinking about cannons
Popcorn, scrap metal
and hoping against solo acts
She's been dreaming of
What it's like to be shot at
Really take risks
Really feel out of breath
And her husband's been writing her letters
About white picket fences

"The daredevil life that we wanted is so much worse than we thought it would be. Let that sweet silent net catch you and lie quietly thinking of me."

Times are changing
And so is he
Times are changing
And she feels like world shaking
She can hear the wolves blowing it down

But she keeps up her stunts
And keeps up her spirits
Till one day the bearded lady is screaming
Her name from the floor of the tent
Up on that tightrope she pauses
A second
There's two grim faced servicemen
Her daredevil husband is dead
Flying a mission over Dresden
Just another casualty of a world at war
Another daredevil in a dogfight and
Now one less mouth for the circus to feed

Suddenly she's high up in the stratosphere
Breathing fumes
And from the tightrope she faints
I've given him my heart, given him my onliness
She rests in her gold suit
Cradled by the safety net he warned her to hang on to
And in her dreams she can't help thinking
Maybe she dodged a suburban bullet

Times have changed
And since the war's end
The leftover men
Have gotten married
And she's been doing nothing
But lying awake in her bed
Thinking
Picturing cannons mauling
White picket fences
Her body in a gold suit
Broken on the green grass
She needs distance and airtime
To cull this restlessness
Get out of the Midwest
**** his conspicuous missingness
And come up with a solo act
To keep her fed

In the morning she finds the ringmaster
Hungover in the hay of the elephant stalls
In the morning she's made a decision
To fly like a cannonball
Through a dreamland
Times are changing
And since she woke up
She's dressed in her gold suit
Setting fire to the average
Dreaming of impossibilities

Often passion is drawn out of the earth
Through the feet and it radiates upwards
Through the body, tracing the limbs
Finally it bottles at the neck,
Never making it to the head
Where it can be reasoned with

Taking out our corkscrews
We pop the bottles and
Drink in the ecstasy
Like wine

Lulu pulls me down the
Sidewalks, keeping me
Dangling a leash length away
She's in training for the
Iditarod and she's
Breathing hard with her valentine tongue
Lolling about
Across the street she
Spots a squirrel and
Climbing the tree after it
She bends the trunk
Arched like a trebuchet
"Should I?" she
Asks me with her chloroform
Eyes "sure, " I say
"Why not give the neighborhood
A new sport,"
Lulu's snowshoes flex and
Let go and
Before we know it
The whole district is
Placing bets on how far the
Coconuts will coast
Before falling back to earth
In flames like
Vacation-scented rockets

Men with rambling fever
Are born not bred
Their diagnoses are terminal
No cure but to go
And they sell their souls to the devil
For a train to hitch a ride on
And they'll die along the highway
While their women stay home
Remaking beds
That have never been slept in

I slept in this morning
Even though I didn't need to
I stretched my limbs
Out into the ocean
Trying to stay afloat alone in my bed
And through my spyglass
I still couldn't find the edge of it
No body of land to stand solidly on
I concluded that beds must be round
Orbiting microcosms floating through apartments
I got up and didn't tuck the sheets in
I got up and didn't make it

I didn't make it through college
Because as soon as I got settled
Into my air mattress
I un-made it
Everything called my name
I tried to ignore the voices
I tried to avoid them
But the mattress deflated quickly
The sails inflated cleaner than a cloudy day
The maps on my wall needed navigating
I had too much exploring to do

I've read about explorers
Men who made their fortunes
Hunting gold and looting temples
Never returning home
Because the beds they left, they had already met
Men who mapped the oceans
And gave their names to continents
Practically for free

I will freely admit that I'm like them
Unable to stop myself
From risking it all
For a chance at nothing at all
Unable to stay in one place
For long enough
To make my bed and lie in it
I will freely admit that rambling fever
is not ladylike
I will freely admit I'm an
Unsettled woman
I will freely admit
I shed lives and beds with purpose
I shed lives and beds like skin