Two Poems

Picnic at School Lake

You say you want to dance, but we are already dancing.
The sky is a mortar, and we are being ground to the pixels
in a photograph of the wind.

After I'm through with you, I'll swallow one more pain pill—
a small resin Buddha the color of cheap wine—
and learn to relax.

I'll ask you to get down on your hands and knees and be a park bench.
I'll plant flowers.
I'll sit.
My cigarette smoke will rise into a mushroom cloud.

It will be the last war.

 

Recalling Puberty with my Sister

The day after the candy store closed,
the liquor store opened.
You called it a hope chest,
and we sat on the curb that whole afternoon
just looking in.