You, Me, and Willie Nelson
Fourteen hundred shooting stars an hour—
we lie on our backs beneath a November meteor shower.
You pinch my nose; I sing about Pancho and Lefty.
We giggle, whispering into each other’s ears.
You tell me about Fyodor Dostoevsky;
I make up something about Evel Knievel.
I’m crazy about you—
and the mountains,
and the autumn starlight.
Esparto
I took the downhill run on Highway 16,
through Guinda, Esparto,
and the olives of Capay.
I checked in after midnight.
Slumped at the counter—
I hadn’t talked in seven hours.
The clerk handed me my key and a bag:
two bottles of water,
and a pack of trail mix.
I’m a Gold member,
apparently only a few nights from Diamond.
I asked to trade up for pretzels.
Apologetically, he said, that wasn’t allowed.
I slumped off to my room.
The bed—huge and empty.
My room was cuddled up
to the freeway.
The Two-Headed Boy
“I’ll knock your teeth out.
Get out of my sight.
I can’t stand the sight of you.”
Anthrax in your spit.
But you’re the one chasing me.
I’m cornered—
in the urine, with a bent, broken toenail.
Fetal; between the block wall,
the air conditioner,
and the seventh grade.
Between your love and your rage—
the Danube and the Sava.
It’s at every table I sit at—
in my hips, under my pillow,
in my saliva, my jaw and
in the thin, frail, old winter sun.
Now I have to figure it out:
how to feel precious
in my own arms,
from a hill of beans.