You pointed to where she'd thrown the glass against the wall and then
traced the veins of my neck with your
nails,
clammish things with a lust for
god knows what

the count of monte cristo
sounds so much better after two
glasses of sweet wine, the rim
resting gently against chapter 5

“This philosophic reflection,” thought he, “will make a great sensation at M. de Saint–Meran’s;” and he arranged mentally, while Dantes awaited further questions, the antithesis by which orators often create a reputation for eloquence.

How great this will make me look, in other words,
this fine comparison between two similar things.
and I find myself smiling, like one would over
the renewal of past lovers, past books
the direct gaze of persons no longer
strangers, beneath waterfalls
wings spread
vaguely vulnerable
and somehow
liberated.

the backroad to
Florence, the one along Elm
that cuts past the McDermott
trailer park--

from matt's house past
Cedar and the old liquor store
at 50mph the cicadas sound more
like a cry or a lingering scream
the crickets don't stop for passing trucks
creaking to the metronome of a swishing
cow tail

farmers switch off their brights, come around
corners slow, in striped beat up Chevys, rusty
toolboxes weakly sliding from side to side
like their owners in threadbare leather seats
the young kids trail close, bumper
to bumper on a two-lane road, just me and
some kid named after his grampa, poppy,
Clint, who needs to get home before
mama chews him out--

sunday service still warm from this morning
where a single beetle clung to the wall and translated
my father's sermon, morse code for the elders, for the
elk and deer, he's been known to speak to hummin'birds
anyway, I think.

i once wrote about
men in California
weathered men, crust of the
earth, salt-soaked docks off the shore
with leather sewn into their backs and
hip bones made of steel and exhaust pipes
that smell of chicory, sweat and cayenne
who dip women by their neck, never sleep
never eat, only feast and when the wind
blows they
leave.