Not the moon’s perpetual adolescence,
its white gasoline issuing from behind
the maple, as open-windowed cars play
rap songs rude as midnight. Not the many-
storied decrepitude within which
the same pawn’s used and taken away from
the board. Rather chlorine, salt, radio—
back when there were stations and DJ’s who
chorused time to turn before you burn—
the bikini-line you saw when, stripped
and ready for anything, nothing happened.
Not this residual full-moon feeling,
the party going on without you, the black-
light pulsing with fluorescence against
Elvis posters. Not the urgency, fluid
now, masked by nothing redder than lipstick
and anger, lipstick and thick-lashed lids—lip
and more lip until the train’s come and gone
with the same whoosh the moon would make, only
whiter. You think your rage will end that way—
in a tunnel. Mole-blind, hours later,
after they dare you to down paper cups
of Scotch. Forget about single, double—
you don’t yet know how to gauge what’s good.
Shell-pink palate sugared, overloaded
with sodas and sweets. Still less you know
how anything gets privilege, left inside
a barrel or the trunk of a car. If
gender’s a popsicle, age—well, age might
as well be a pickle, or malt sprinkled
like snow over ice cream at Willie’s,
where photographs leer from crooked walls:
the largest banana split in history
shot in black and white. Skinny-tied men ogling
the girl who pops out of a layer cake.