When We Played With Summer a Space And Made It Drunk and Lust and Sing



Published in Slope

In the street kids raced classic furniture.
We watched Aeron side chairs drag
Chicago cocktail tables.  In the park
The woman who collected pop bottles
For Christ cast kittens.  Her occasional
Psalms attenuated the syntax of us—
Of vignette existence.  We shall under-
Abscond was our motto.  I was bodkin
(Blunt needled, large-eyed) yet you were bodkin
(Ivory hairpin), too.   The ex-Cubans
Staged a thrilling untetheredball match
In what was left of the McKinley band shell.  
"Butt me," you said, pushing your tortoiseshell
Cheaters up-nose.  The face stretcher
Who rented our attic joined us on the stoop.
She was reluctant.  I was unethical.  
You bent forward and down to smell the lilies.
A man riding a Van Der Rohe daybed
Like a litter stopped to beg leather wax.
His porters were living for the breviary.
We declined.  The sun crushed its stems.
"Would you like a beer-avous?" you asked.
"Pronto-avous," I answered.  In those days
Summer was the machine that we believed
Would never be erstwhile. We shall under-
Capitalize was the maxim fueling
Our axiology.  You departed
For the dope-store so I inquired,
I posed to our tenant: Negative?
"Negative," she said.  A palooka
On an ebony Noguchi table
Hit a fire hydrant and burst into flames.  
She passed me her cigar and went inside.

last updated Sunday, November 30, 2008 @ 7:46 PM