is all primrose, poppy & sunbonnet. Moonflower we’ve yet to witness —

     acolytes of any flood that would runnel latent blossoms

          over rutted backwaters of sand & sediment.

 

On the motel tv we watched Funeral Parade of Roses —

     fused our arousal to that dizzy journey into cinema:

          fantasia breaking boundaries, masks worn to elude loneliness.

 

Slack-limbed after love, I lay in the bed

     you’d risen from & rest in our afterness,

          my skin still settled into curves you heated to flames,

 

strewn over the sheets like tailings of abandoned mines,

     waiting to be backhauled into stowage. & you —

          an ore strike played out, undone, sluice in the shower,

 

the rush of water frantic against the plastic door,

     steaming the room like the fog of some other country,

          dampness between us thickening the room

 

with the omniscient scent of motel rosewater:

     such a quick washing — a quitclaim deed

          for desert bodies unlearning the late hours:

 

our night ends in fast-forward: what is it of this cauterized earth

     you can’t pin-down, lover? Memory sequestering skin

          sequined in sweat? Mere metaphorical suffix?

 

You tell me I’m obsessed, Oh married man.

     But your hunger settled into me once more.

          Like dusklight in our burnished & borrowed mirror.