the girl was slung to the ground like:
(a) a sack of garbage into a dumpster.
(b) somebody had something to prove.
In my body neuron-zipped words and more words.
My lexicon building from nothing to something good.
Embossed tattoos like small notes on sheet music.
do homework again. Some Saturdays
my ace, Terry, would say, “Guess
who was buying Teaberry gum
in the drugstore on Stenton?”
And I could see the sweet
epiphany still stunning his eyes
The way soaked, green corpuscles
rasp each other’s mouths and hands
braiding the woof of God’s mind,
that’s how it is, says
the giant rat’s captive wife.
Love comes to me un-
repentant, toward it all vectors
converge repeating, like
I think about it more than I should now,
that January noon—an hour before
algebra—how most days I’d be
thinking football or replaying
the seventy-some kisses I’d gotten
over those lean years, but that day
Joseph is a mystery fan, owns 54 Nancy Drews.
Nancy’s his friend, along with Jo, Meg, and Amy
and poor Beth, of course, whom he still mourns.
He also reads of knights and wizards, superheroes,
and how to win at Nintendo.
somewhere a friend is dreaming of me, or someone
a stranger is peeing ecstatic under the same moon.
A covenant then between us.
Angel, hold him, while I bury him in these clean words,
And pray to see the resurrection of the rose mountain.
the tiger and the condor, the whale, the honeybee;
the village, the book, the lantern. Then you. Then me.