Nailing Things Down

may also kill them,
but she had no great plans
to live happily ever after.

Today is all she could manage,
that & the breathless sounds of Pres,
tamping down the day’s anarchy.

Twenty years earlier, her voice left her,
so she quit smoking. When it returned
it was vibrating like a dusty contralto.

Today she smells facts:
the air thick with tomorrow’s rain,
a slow leak in the basement.

The five shots of Jameson on his breath.

           His undershirt brushed with
                      someone else’s perfume, a scent
                                 she’d worn in high school—Shalimar.

Twenty years ago, on a dime,
she’d have cut or shot him to clear
the air, but today is not that day.

Today she looks at her body
           with some hesitation. It’s late
                      in the morning & the gravy’s
  gonna run thin tonight.

Will she miss the wanting, the having or the gone?

He courts her with Soir de Paris & braids myths in her hair. To hear time how they need it to be is the sound of dare. His soft-burred tenor soaks her like grapes in wild yeast. A beautiful loser, she takes pleasure in being incomplete. He draws tears from grown men when he plucks his box. She is reckless, never trained, so much a wound clock. They move like movement in a still life picture. She sings behind the beat and leans into the future. Stepping out of sequence as though they’ve just begun. Then again, the start moves back, depending on the run.

They're up to their necks in fever and floodplains, clear- ing ground along miles of riverbed, bloodred. Carolina heat burns holes in their straw hats, leaves halos of steam around silhouettes. Down the line, they are one deep breath riding field rhythms Movin', movin'. Lone bones of things: a dog's jaw, a man's leg, a baby's pelvis; thin bones of turtles, birds, fish pulled to the surface by swole-up hands. Hopsack dresses singe the women's bodies. Fringes hang from the straw pants on sweat-soaked, bare-chested men in the line.

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Nailing Things Down

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Nailing Things Down

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