Untitled (Young Loves)

Located at Oak Park Rd. and Forest Preserve Rd. in Chicago,
you must park about a mile away and make the trip to the en-
trance on foot. Once inside you must pass numerous buildings
marked: A, B, C, etc. Follow the main concrete path […]

I.

We move in on the place light-
footed on the dewy grass like quick
hyenas in the night, acting on an
intuitive stealth, unlearned… –

I toss my pack of Camels to you
and your hands open up and catch it
so, like a child’s.

II.

Smoking bowl after kindled
bowl, in perfect and effortless
rotation, under the bath’s hanging,
mirrored fog, faces gathered
round, waterfalling milky white
hits, giddy and effervescent,
painting each others’ hairs green over
ripe, lime green,

III.

You can smell the asbestos most
in the gym, steeped in pools
of murky water in the pitch-black, a stage
upon which we set the booze,
our floodlight brightening the back wall.

Our feet dangling off
the ledge toward the side of the stage:
I can’t remember what we back
and forthed about, but the booze
on your breath was pleasant.

IV.

The boy’s teeth were long,
discolored, had he been sustained
on rancid meats, had he
been wasting away for long, his hollow,
glassy eyes, taken

by the candleflame he had lit the tip
of his menthol cigarette with.

He had finished his story,
though I wasn’t sure enough to believe
if it was true his mom
was a porn star. –

A sound, some rattling from inside
the dilapidated innards of the place.
He assures us it’s only the ghosts.

V.

Save for in dreams, stillness
in motion, faraway and in movement
and muscle and feeling we had all along
but without knowledge of (had we
never then seen the stars through
all the purple and brown).

Psychic Incest

Translucent floaters like shed skins drift
apart in the pool of my eye, disintegrating
in the woolly sun. Arizona is hell on earth.

I examine my body in the bathroom mirror.
My arms and chest: a woman’s bones, draped
in sunburnt gooseflesh.

Mine eyes, bruises – sunken, spent –
whiteheads that persist and surface up on
my chin, like memories thinly repressed.

My behavior is justified – and so is my
disdain. My God, I am sofa king – I’m just
through with this whole fucking place.