Last summer, I rose 
before dawn, crept 
through the house still 
pregnant with sleep, 
pulled on tattered jeans,  
a stained sweatshirt, 
a baseball cap  
ragged with wear, 
grabbed my coffee and lunch 
from the fridge, and drove 
south to Watsonville 
to unload grapes 
in the early morning light. 
All day, I shoveled them 
into the destemmer, 
then into the juicer, 
the golden liquid 
sweeter than ambrosia. 
I filled tanks to ferment, 
piled the empty stems 
picked clean onto 
the compost heap, 
refilled the tank on the fork- 
lift, hid the keys, 
and followed the sun 
that had already set, 
chasing the low glow 
at the horizon  
as the stars came out, 
constellations 
I could hardly raise 
my eyes to see.

What if we got a gun? I whispered
from my pillow to you on yours.
I’m so against it in theory, I continued,
but in practice, & these days …
                        Then I burst, became
a wave of laughter, & you joined me.
We were a tidal giggle. & then I felt a huge
wobble, some cosmic shudders, perhaps from
a god with skin problems
unresolved from adolescence.
Unreleased from adolescence,
childhood, I saw how I was spiritually
still in uncomfortable overalls & overall over
none of it.
             You too, it seemed, as what you
then said was, What if
I became a bodybuilder? You said,
you spoke this to me
at normal volume like it was regular info,
like we were at Planet Fitness or in Galaxy
Muscle, not in our bedroom, our bed.
What if, you said, I bodybuilt so good,
so Arnold, to the point of the world turning
totally unhomophobic? Not
a speck of homophobia left, not one
subatomic particle a miserable
homophobe, the whole damn globe,
amazing, right?
             & I said, Or I could become a stronger
writer, more cutting
in my musings, more ferocious
in my music?
In bed, in response, you looked at me
fondly, probably the fondest
you’ve ever looked at me, & said, Baby.
You will. But how about we do both?

Both? I asked. Writing & bodybuilding?
Writing, you said, & the gun.