ON SUNDAYS (POETRY TEST)

On Sundays

The past slithers to me 

from a corner booth

My milkshake melted before

the pink could reach my lips

My past lost hours of sleep

like the fork I left on that red picnic table upstate

All I had was a white convertible to chew corn nuts

and smoke chamomile joints, driving 

drunk was your specialty along with kissing

foghorns in the dark. I was a sailor 

valentine one week too soon. I heard it rained 

artificial tears in California.

A girl complained she couldn’t read

Her hands too dry for comprehension

I read the diary you left

against the moldy clementines

Dated back to butterfly clips and my runny nose

I was a translation of a dream

Long summer feelings 

dissipate eventually. 

(You let all the peonies die on the windowsill)

A message underneath the split pea soup reads:

(WEDNESDAY ONLY)

Pleasant Street

We ate dinner at five pm 

and traded snowflake blisters 

Mine looked like a triceratops.

Threw nickels 

by the limestone quarry 

at Budweisers on the rails 

Talked about old dogs 

and the way they bite 

slowly hesitant then all blood lost remorse 

I crushed Luckies on wailing grass 

licked the ice

(tasted chlorinated) Saw a lion on the face of a trashcan 

and a baby on a pinwheel.

Looked for a job at the bowling alley.

Found a flood at the bottom of a single saddle shoe

I’m still an odd duck

I stood still with Santa Lucia 

wax in my hair. Your voice 

has more texture with a mouth 

stuffed with pita. I draped salami 

around my fingers or were they carrots

Where are the girls who talk under the moon?

Got high at Dolores. There’s more hill

than park. I held the sun between my pinky

and thumb. Caught your shadow 

in a blue harmonica and gave it away

to a boy who sold roses and piña coladas to swans. 

Last December, we drove too far south. Promised 

we’d never stop counting each grain of sand

from here to LA and every Holiday Inn lit up

like a birthday candle.