i.

In San Diego at the bottom of the stairs with the powerline flashing red green
[wings,

in a house prettier than any house I’ll own, old and loved, in the second floor
[apartment,

at the window. Now San Francisco. Tacoma. Tucson. On the highway somewhere
[between

Ross and Redding, in the parking lot of the Safeway after prom, on the bus, in the [woods -

I am resolved to be better when it happens this time, to be a different person this
[time,

or the next. On the street a few blocks away from the powerline and the parrots on
[it,

on the night before, even before I knew the winding arm of another. In the kitchen
[my kitchen,

for however long it stays that way already it’s a kitchen tiptoeing towards the past,

it won’t happen again, not there - back again in a bar four blocks away, in front of
[the karaoke stage

back again in the bar, beneath the Foster’s sign, again in LA, in Greensboro,

future cities even, future towns, future rivers, future bars. Not in Boulder, or in
[Boise, or

Glendora, or Queen Creek. But please I want the strange world where it happens
[over and over again,

in Columbus, in a forest clearing, beneath a canopy - the strange world saguaro’d
[and camas’d,

the strange world wrestled and delighted, the strange world on the wing. And again
[the apartment,

the circled chair, the low table, the head thrown back and lights dancing on the
[wall.

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ii.

The recognition - have you not answered this slowly before? The recompense, the
[response,

the electrostatic shock. That like loves like - that like is not alike at all, that it is
[hungry

and so disturbed. That like loves like, that alike is made solid here, ephemerally so,[memory

at once and also fingers and flesh. Suddenness is central, light and lingering. Dress
[all covered

in citrus, arm in bright tattoos, hand-me-down Carhartt jeans, dark hair, red,
[inscriptions -

the tease, the gentle touch, the shove, the aching muscles - consider this, consider
[again

that it could be confused this time, and that it could have been confused the time
[before,

and that the confusion is desired too, where it overlaps, and consider the red, bright
[red, and

neon. Consider the arm in bed, on pillow, on comforter, on thigh. Consider
[whatever pressure,

whatever velocity, whatever force acting back on the exerted force, whatever is
[supposed to be

equal and at equilibrium and then at entropy, the equivalency decayed. That like
[loves alike,

that this is not alike at all, that this is likeness distilling into the dissimilar into the
[deliberate

or not, that that remains to be discovered, consider that the hand feels equivalent to
[a kiss,

one-sided and brazen and demure. This all will have to be computed too, although
[it can’t,

and the place where it happens will emerge again and again and again in the fading
[light of the dream.

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