SUMMER, SOFT MIDNIGHT

summer unwinds, all golden arms and these purple flowers will soon lie dead on the earth’s floor. there is a great red cyst forming on my hand

tan-lines, my skin is

newly hot to the touch & if i could craft my own word

the august moon, the early spring

when it is still too cold to leave the house without a

scarf but you keep the windows open

anyway

i’d have it mean

milk and peanut brittle

butter softened in a dish

the pathetic longing for what never was

& the hunger for what never is. lying dizzy on the

bathroom tile in the summer, soft midnight

but have you been to the garden recently?

since you left i’ve noticed how every leaf bends green toward the stars, and that a swollen patch of sunlight

could almost be mistaken for your face

rotting blueberries and freshly shaven legs on cool sheets

that photo of kate moss with a bush and a stare

a careless july, petrichor perfume

dizzying friendship (i miss you, i love you)

never saying goodbye again

and is it always summertime in the cinema? hot and feverish and when all the lights are off we almost

breathe as one. i tape my ticket stubs to the wall

i feel sticky. i feel aimless.

but by summertime’s end i’lll walk to the river

wet swans circle a lover’s cigarette. and i’ll try not to linger

on all the what-if’s and nostalgia

or i’ll try

not to be consumed whole by it

your heart leaks beneath old cobblestone

creaks ever-softly under these floorboards. offers itself up in piles of deadening violets

& i know that in october

i will find some roadkill forty miles out the city,

cornfields flanking, wheat

and i suppose i’ll think it looks like you

i’ll kill a fox with a stolen rifle and that corpse it’ll look like you

if i see god in my dreams he will look so much like you

steamed milk

rosemary

conversation

solitude