Frank

: For my Father, Frank :

During, or after, 'doing it',
I cannot help but fear
haphazard insemination,
condom'd or otherwise, as
a tiny new life seems to threaten
my own.

Though I never fail to smile
when imagining
that moment, melodramatic,
of my own conception.

A day, a moment to be sure,
when mothers' menses ceased to trickle
and down they went
into a ditch
somewhere in the flats of Iowa.

Alongside that endless road,
those golden fields,
probably frightening a nest or two,
or perhaps a small herd of cattle
skipping away,
their heads big, and bobbing.

Lovers

Pulling hay from her hair
with long stemmed fingers,
we slipped quietly through
leaves, dried and crumbling,
lips swollen from kissing,
over orange mud flats,
to a place where she said
we should go.

I was at once excited by
and terrified of
the gleam in her eye.
I have seen this same look
in the eyes of convicts and
sardines.

In the density
to which I was led,
vegetation,
that smelled like tea.
Felt the barb,
and the too much of my speaking;
bland accompaniment.

Beneath it

a barking dog

a bit of string.

'Together'

The flattening of waves on the sand
seems redundant to some.
The placement of stones
seeming arbitrary,
or the way ice falls into a gimlet glass,
stacked and cracking.

I saw her leap headlong
breasts, agog, agog,
attempting to grapple
and land an open mouth
where it may, or may not belong.
Within the hour I knew
we would be leaving in wide stoops,
laughing and pulling at
each others belt loops.

'Far more complex than
considerations of distance.'

Most of the sidewalks
both new and old,
now damp in the rain
have known these conjunctions.

Above, the branches
tangled as if to prove a point.

(with thanks to Jordan Stempleman, and a rewrite from Professor Rush Rankin)