1
I've got all my money with me here,
all the bottom, this shell I had found in the heat and wings of,
the nauseating drunken heat of the Jersey bay, moreover,
young and plump, I, not yet as distressed that you can tell it to me by the photographs of my eyes
and the skin of my knees and thighs
yet time strikes as well all too soon
some things are out of place, not quite ripe, take to the protocol
she turns my red face on Canal
and then skips to the nearest XO joint her hasty decision
watching my feet at the floor of the bus
feeling cold and not being able to do a thing
it is all a difference, even the cheek that held her on the slope of the grass
which goes now the other way,
slopes even the other way,
holds another,
there was a large crowd there one oddly warm fall
I scanned the expressions of the runners and mothers
that someone might've drowned even
they had a specialist brought out here to the Schuylkill
but nothing
I was lonely and drunk one morning after work and I had said all the nothings I could to win her
cool
suburban
northern night
sporting
familial
annual
on the carpet,
both bathrooms,
next to the cooler
my mother and father leaving me there, (upon my insistence
my sister, (so far off elsewhere she could not have existed,
I have stayed behind and shrunk, almost, (all I have are nerves now, raw
I lay exposed for the place
here, the city here, this!
my head stems upward from a slight spell that dizzies me, is timeful,
takes me out of it, out by the southern sky where the glare of the city is a cover
and a quadrant of stars hold themselves barely together
a string of cosmos where is this? that I am here?
full of food, thriving? partners w/ someone? in question?
in someone's love as well as contempt?
where are these children being hushed off to?
when will these matters reveal themselves, broaden themselves, lay flat?
I call them monsters if I may, I was planning on which door to leave from
Out in my fittest form upon the road where my flowers are heavy
too much so to break a wrist for a gal
yet Love, and so forth, etc., for a pal,
I'd
2
So it was another,
she had told me over the phone
that these events did not correlate
I was in my yard snuffing out my high flame,
considered it a moment,
and let it rest
3
Heaven shook everyone out
4
I was on a bus
when I was that young I had no head for names of places
I had two names for myself then, still, now,
hers was Adrienne
