Walking across Wyoming
I fell for you, your curls
sweat plastered, your eyes
changing blue to green, your
flirting with waitresses while
I watched laughing for your shy
young hands hiding. I fell
longing for the touch
of your brown hand brushing
my brown hand, my bleached
hair tangled in your mistaken
fingers, exchanging Farka Toure
for Fugazi, breaking
my eardrums, my patience,
my grown wild heart.
Days are shrinking now, hit hard
by winds that parch, skinning
sun raw by desert sand
carried. At night I hear radio
voices clattering between our tents,
restless and urgent. Walking, I see
fire-cracked rock buried
beneath sand, the way
our eyes plant explosives through
the unnamed senses. At night
you visit philosophy, torturing
breakfast and still …
Spain is one half-assed plan
to work through winter, one
idea cooked up on a stormy day
of crackling lightning and a missed
tornado. Next, Cuba, but no one liked
that, not even you knowing
about the whores and cuba libres
and hot sun, hot salt on skin.
Or Argentina has friends waiting,
long digs and pampas like home,
all in Spanish. If we both
rode an airplane to Patagonia
would you even hold my hand
shoo the Latinos from their lust?
Or would you indulge your own for me,
turned south and wild with hunger?
I fell for you like that hail
fell hard to earth last week.
Hug me, miss me.
orphan poems 