Raw Goods

Fuchsia

she carried a planter box of fuchsia
from 25th Street to 40th
where she met her lover
the tattooist

flyer of rocket ships
bearer of ray guns
gone to the dogs
five with gray muzzles

we are those who walk
from TV movies to
redwood backyards
where we soak
anchors and keyboards
in steaming
chlorine

cross broken side-talks
trade road-trip limericks
for backrubs in woodshops
where chessboards affix
glue to fingertips

steered a craft
a stolen vessel
across pacific waters
gravel frontage roads
from Redding to Prague
Copenhagen to New York City
Miami to Chicago to Seattle
where styrofoam tortoise-shells
fog eyeglasses with teargas and
walkie-talked codewords

no secret, this
love for a violet motorcycle
a velvet armchair
or a continent
wherever she wants to sit

we begin it

in new year's forests
shoreside campfires
peach cider and popcorn nipples
traces through silk and cashmere
these strange doctors glove our
conversations of tequila and tongue

where the pinata splits
and the samba breaks
under rope ladder bedspreads
and Fifth Street lopes
up staircase streetsides
to carpeted cubicles
or a quickie in the john

where rain-splattered windshields
crack carpet-bed wool pants
into couch comfort kneecaps
twist betwixt thighs, a
pepper-spray sting;
under this reluctance

we sing

twelve days of solstice
Cascades of rainforests
snow-capped pinetrees
not a new encampment
but a different path out
where the guides don't know
where to go

we dance

another story, this
porch-swing exchange
when mothers smoke
and teacups fume
under raspberry goulash

another poem, that
six-year old's birthday
trip to the watercolor shop
or twist of the swizzle-sticks

another tale, in which
funerals trade for invitations
frame quotations with magenta
paintbrushes splatter
fuchsia and chartreuse
across our upstairs mattress
tossed into two

we sleep

alone

posted by judy j @ 1:43 PM