This is a poem that I think came out a few years ago,
but it's one of these things that
happened many, many years ago.
I mean, the setting is sort of late 50s,
but it struck me as being in some way applicable today,
you know, eternally applicable.
You'll see in a minute.
So I'll begin with this one.
It's called "Hurricane Season."
Just as the world was ending, we fell in love immoderately.
I had a pair of blue pinstripe trousers,
impeccably pressed against misfortune.
You had a pair of silver spiked heel
shoes and a peekaboo blouse.
We looked swank, kissing while reflected in a pawn shop
window, banjos and fiddles around us,
even a gleaming tuba.
I said, two phosphorescent minute hands
against the unmeasurables, geniuses
when it came to undressing each other
by slow, tantalizing degrees.
That happened in a crepuscular hotel that had seen better
days, across from some sort of august state institution,
rain-blurred, with a couple of fake Egyptian stone lions.