All our stories are flowers with wounds in them.
In one, it is high summer and sometimes I want her
dress to be white and stiff like a sail. Other times
it is the color of a bright marigold, its scent
a mixture of shyness and ambition as she stands
at a restaurant front counter, clanging the cash
register drawer open and close. As for him,
he smells like a library or a phone book left
open in the rain. Or he is the more than 3,000
closely overlapping steps of Machu Picchu:
not even a knife could slide between his teeth
to topple a whole empire. Above her head,
shelves of flutes and cordial glasses. Highballs,
hurricanes; shots, snifters, shooters. When he
bears down is he a storm front darkening, a wall
of clouds with no alternate ending? This moment
is not yet the spill of amber-colored glass, not yet
the nostalgia of a jazz band playing Let me
call you sweetheart on the radio, not yet
counting the months on knuckles and grooves
to the offer she could not afterwards refuse.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.