girl

girl

I never came on to you like I knew it was wrong

and all these years later our time together

is sweet tea in a peat-bog steep, that neat mahogany

beneath your lower lip and rooting

your teeth, a shade

I’d sometimes see, depending

on the light when you came near me,
on that cross, on the throat

of God hanging in plaster or cast brass

how the small valley or grotto or hollow scrape

fox hole would in the low glow of the sacristy

grow even more dim, slow to only enough
shame to touch

with whatever glove or thumb I’d muster

just God and me and that, what’s it called above

the clavicle? the jugular’s notch? and I come

to remember then I was young and suffocating
under my sister’s pillow game I’d reach up and touch

that spot and the panic and my thrumbing
blood would, wave on wave, sluice in through
and beyond my jaw and it was later

in the wax and liquid light I’d glide inside

the slight of salt that sexy slide down the neck

between the breasts and you know the rest...

I never came on any road like I knew it

was wrong but on some notches I was parting

the fog to get to the bottom, moving through
and getting by on the weight of  every
33 feet and change in atmosphere

like I were all the wet spiders

webs like I wasdying but taking my time

about it, like bogs, like the water in pitcher plants, cheeks

of petals closing over the little throat oh! Oh! no! No! Not
Yet
Not
Yet
Yes
OH!