I bear an open hand  & flat palm I was taught that this was the way  to carefully coax animals to eat when they are

chivalry isn’t dead, so i walk you home in the dark past the church and the middle school. with two girls, it’s always a question.

Let me serve you/ Let me do things to you/ the way you want me to/ Let me help you feel good/ and leave me

—After Hieronymus Bosch I. I came to this party early, and I would like to leave it. I’m corralled in the kitchen, where the drinks

Are you just someone new I might wake up to for a while? The touch of your fingertips a spell to conjure worth from wasted

Make cotton feel like silk   and drugs come on stronger  Blur tequila-fueled fantasies of men in patterns  into citrus curls and tobacco lipstick I touch

your leg twitched asleep, your comfort was astounding. i thought you were in love with me prompting piercing swallows each bluer than the last. now

Smashed heads Brain soup “Don’t talk  Like that  I’m gonna yak” You started  Another silent sidewalk  My aimless body emasculated Drifting under a Draped limb

or was it not like that, the way she came  together. There are lessons or at least   one letter, left of consonantal  divide where

we live in the space  between darkened doorways the thick heat of this lakeside town paints sticky kisses across our  freckled cheeks longing like the

 —— Through crushing waves you hold me  fast my anchor in wine-blue sea  Every ambition becomes to be yours to see how you need love