Crystalline

I like you better
with the lights off
in the backseat
on a dark street
by the beach.

I like to picture
in my head
what I’d prefer
you to look like
as you’re giving it.

I’d like to not
feel the dread of
knowing that
I’m a hypocrite,
superficial
like the ones
I can’t have.

I wish I could
transplant your brain
into the body
of fantasy.
I wish this
didn’t matter
that much to me.

Lorelie

The couch is crowded
with clothes and golden gift boxes,
the kind used to hide sweaters
from thieving eyes on holidays.
Wedged between them,
my once again attired form
has taken residence
while she sits

Indian-style, unadorned,
unencumbered by any covering, comfortable
in her paper bag carapace of skin.
On a single Easter egg pastel blue sheet,

which drapes over her divan
like a dust cover over a car,
like a slip over a stiff in a morgue,
we talk the talk of old friends
and not strangers.

Coco

Her mouth,
the elderly smoking section
of a Floridian Chinese restaurant,
is on me without asking
as her hand cradles my head
like an incestuous mother.
Old enough to be just that,
she barely speaks my language,
coos in my ear
these words I can’t make out
that sound-like
distant and distorted cousins
to the ones I know.

Melodramatic moans made
at the slightest of touches,
her skin is smooth
and smells like nothing
but jasmine tea. She stands
in a summer dress, carmine and yellow
like a South Western June
with my hands in her hair,
jet black, jet straight
as I sit on the table
as these arms are pulling me close
like women half her age have
when they have loved less sincerely.