Town & Country

When my friends were dying
   back in the city, I was pretty damn healthy

out in the country, sitting on the taut taupe leather
   of the passenger side, always the passenger side.

I liked to look out the cold car window

hoping the sun wouldn't rise
   above that shitty yellow house

where food burned most every night
   where mites ate the grain

where a mouse found its way
   into the refrigerator and died

where it wasn't even an allegory
   to say a snake bit my ring finger. It was supposed to be

restorative, refreshing. It was supposed to be
   more wholesome.

A lot of men died that summer
   but it's you I want to tell

that I wish you had done what you wanted to
   back in one of our city's fine high rises

before you forgot yourself and before I
   weighed more than you. I wish you had jumped

from your balcony down
   to that courtyard cliché

and either broke or drowned or emerged

triumphant, glittering like the rainbow
   you pointed out to me at a gas station

in Santa Monica, born from the grease stains
   on the asphalt as you were pulling away.





"Town & Country" from If I Should Say I Have Hope (YesYes Books, 2012). Reprinted with the permission of the author.