IT'S SEVEN

​

So like the delicate setting

of a picnic blanket in the sun,

the bright dining room hushed 

 

to a dim-lit corridor. 

Patrons slid off their heels, smeared bare feet 

against legs beneath tablecloths. 

 

I don’t know why our sex breathes 

in shadows. Yes, exceptions abound. 

Somewhere there’s a meadow 

 

where people love in the sun, 

maybe. But that room had robbed time 

of time—strange, I know, 

 

but I needed the sunset-splayed 

brawny yawn across day; the sun

sliding down, slow-down, 

 

until it halos some hill. I tried 

to pretend love waited in this—forking 

an Alaskan fish, my eyes just shy 

 

of refusing eye contact. 

It is too much to have a body, 

to monitor its functions 

 

so on luck-lustered nights 

it meets another body—a toast! 

to pat fork against glass 

 

while expanding my throat: 

I had this grand feeling something 

grand should happen, but 

 

the waiter waltzed round 

lighting candles as if silent ceremony 

followed next. The evening kept on 

 

flickering shoddy evening 

when I imagined myself moving—

faint figure on a dense floor 

 

drifting deeply to melody,

sweat-peppered skin; how glorious we

can be when only vague fractions. 

 

If I leave now, go 

west away enough, it may still be dark 

when I get there. 

from Eveningful. First published  in The Boiler, Issue XXI, Fall 2016.