You say it’s easy when it’s faster
I still can’t guess what you’re after
– Catherine Wheel, “Black Metallic”
We get everything we want, but—
this day (so many days joined together)
has become a chorus of swirling pinks.
Somewhere, it’s July 4th, and Paige dances
underneath a breaking canopy of
fireworks; she spins like a roman candle and
the light from the rockets paints her face gold,
then cherry, finally quicksilver.
In slow motion, I watch a partygoer
lob an M-80 into the neighbor’s
kitchen; it explodes like an early star.
What a shriek we raised! I’d never seen so
many faces collapse from joy into
screaming at such a whipping speed.
Elsewhere: Cath holds my hand and leads me
up Heaven Hill. The sunshine runs Day-Glo.
The voice of her kindness sends fingers
shivering along my mind, and lower.
I never ever felt so cool, head held
in her lap as we watch the clouds roll
into startling shapes: we see mostly
goddesses. Pallas Athena descends
with her big spear in hand; we both gasp.
Another, different Cath corners me in
a dark room beyond her party. She swoons
drunkenly, with a hellstar in her eye.
She whispers she wishes she could
impregnate me. I wish she could, too, just
to know what it feels like to swap the shape
of our throats around, to sing in each other’s voice.
Another time, further back but forward:
Mary sticks her tongue out at the night,
gives the moon the finger; she promises
she’ll show me why. She is so tuff, crushing
a Pabst can in her palm. The jacket punks
love to party with her. I’m no different:
her blondeness hits me right in the soft spot.
Down in the valley beneath her apartment,
the self-storage facility sleeps while
its black pavement and parking lot cool down.
Those halide lights brighten midnight for
us, changing a dark sky into a more
analgesic orange. Traffic blows across
a bridge and croons. Oh man, we have everything
—but we don’t get it all at one time.