Does this little death
inside you grow?

You know the never rest
and tumbling jitters. The post-
climax release is addiction, felt
lions on the Sunday School board.

What kind of flag flutters
deep diluted ghosts into
the sky?

I just want to fidget
noiselessly in the corner, inconspicuous,
innocuous, content to fiddle
with a scrap of paper, or flick
ants gently from my thigh.

I’m not some bloodless lover,
pumped full of gasoline and spit,
some crass, outrageous specter
listening to you breathe at 4:00 AM,
musky and grinning and levelheaded.

Were you limp? Outrageously
futile fingers clasping at skin
like your mother’s tit, hungry
and limber and juiced on spit
and ethanol, prim, smirking,
caught off-guard by pheromones.

Do you linger on my name?

let’s lay down the law
because the law is heavy

the picture, whether 
by motion or hurry, dissolves
into static, gauzy and faint.

it’s as if words
that tumbled out yesterday
have lodged in my throat,

like those dreams
where you scream but only
a vapor of bees escapes.

The debris of tart summers
thrums in silvered 
hayfields. Our specimens
teem: oblivious fireflies,
blaring moths,
elegant milksnakes
from beneath the porch.