When your sterling earrings
chime against my teeth,
I don’t remember being sixteen
parked at Russell Lilley Field
in my father’s two-tone Ford.
Fifteen year-old Debbie, sweaty,
squirmed out of school clothes
for flesh rubbing until we could
get the fit right. Bloody nights
of cliches, we could do nothing
with our burning bodies.
When your peach scented hair
traces across my face, I taste
the seasons of forever, forget
Debbie’s mother selling marriage
in the pentecostal darkness.
We prayed for menstrual rage.
Blood would not come,
so she moved her away to keep
me from spoiling her daughter’s form,
forcing the family
into a deeper shame.
When your oiled breasts slip
into my wet mouth and my tongue
slides across your tender nipples,
I do not remember Mary reclined
in the yellow Rambler parked between
tobacco barns on the tenant farm.
I cannot recall her musk scented body
under mine under the moon’s shine
rocking squeaking shocks
in shattered music or leading
leaf springs in long notes.
When your tender thighs quicken
against my unshaven face,
I drink your sweetened taste,
forget drunken August, Mary and I
tangled together in the dusk
too drunk to think of our nakedness
and how it would shape our lives.
Married in my own knots,
I am entangled in the finest
silk of flesh and familiar places.
