church steps on
       a hot summer night

you pushed me
back on the brick
lost in new neighborhoods
seduced by new neighbor

no words
just spiritual
pout-puffed red
blush
from tongue-tickled
throat

your small breasts
perked against my chin
your back arched
climax

we came quietly
deliriously
together
God seemed
close as cloud
on your cheek

visit

I sent her
home to you
disheveled,
lemon hair
lit, impaled
alive

she'd come
for love, time,
mind-altering
wine,
oysters, clams
some Thai

she licked,
fingered,
then wanted
words of
all I thought
I gave

I wrote
her verse
then gave
her back,
she wouldn't
even bathe

Letter to the Gittin Place [address unknown]

You told me that first night at the pub
that you fucked every poet in Wilmington,
excluding girls and Methodists -
hating Methodists but with no clue why.
That night was your pick-up,
"I have a monster father thing,
if sucking off older men were a crime
I'd be doing time. jus kiddin.
I'll take a double of anything brown,
straight up, choked on an ice cube once."

They didn't have a drink to take away
the taste I had of your fresh face flirting.

To your place. Three flights up. I stayed.
Small cunning hands, state of the art neck and throat,
a young Bardot body and look.
Spent weeks watching your eccentricity
but never felt I grasped the essence.
Talked a lot, you rattled on and loved it -
like Tango’ with more conversation.
You called Jesus uncle, had no idea who
Buddha, Marx or Mickey Mantle were.
You told me my cum smelled like potpourri -
at that point I had to look it up.

And your smell - it stuck to my hands,
my sweater, my jeans -
It stayed with me all day and made me feel ripe.

You picked raisins from your cereal before milk,
but if I didn't buy Raisin Bran you sulked.
"It sounds worse on paper," you giggled,
"take those plump words and turn
those raisins into grapes."
You were like the roof moving
under the heat of day, writhing 'til the next sex.
Never stood still long enough to judge.
Suggested a threesome. Changed your mind.
All in the time it took to pour a coffee.
We both loved to play,
take holidays you called it.

Remember Saratoga, won the trifecta,
stroked one another and drank champagne
until they asked us to leave.

You told me I was sensitive.
that you had a thing for poets,
had sensitive matters you wanted to discuss,
but never did.
Nor did I ever see you read anything,
only mock the words.
"Forget that I'm young and pretty,
fuck me with those angry words."
That I know of I've never written angry words.
You left town on a whim, same as you had come.
for years I'd think of you and get hard.

Now I think of you as one thinks of freedom,
or whenever someone mocks the words,
or licks their lips, or moves a raisin.