The bitters

The bitters in my old fashioned
are cassia and cinchona bark,
orange peel and gentiana petals.

Two decades of growth
before flora became aroma,
aging to a black liqueur
like a concentration of pain.

Two dashes of Angostura
season my rye while I age
and concentrate and bitter.

Her voice draped

Her voice draped from red lips
to a gold beer can,
then pooled in the corner
among velour couch cushions.

The speakers set quiet for a breath
before the house vibrated again
at the frequency of my intoxication.

A young, electric harmony began.
“I don’t know what I want to study,
but I love light in every form.”

Gentlemen of the road

The heat grew around us
as my body pressed to yours
and twelve more at our sides.

The bass shook us together,
rippling over our heads
into the hot and drunk and high.

The song, once a comfort,
now madness in that pulse
and chaos in my mind.

The tightness a vacuum
for my breath and I gasped
for the dirty summer air.

So I turned against the sea
to edge my way out, and you
were pressed to someone new.

The night’s rapture of faces
and beer and guitar charged again
as I lay on the grass.

The crowd passed and gave
heat to the sidewalk, at last,
and I waited there for you.

The silence came first
and the cold followed,
but you had gone with the rest.

So I found the tent
and waited for you to come—
hot and drunk and high

Lyman, a glory hole

Before noon, the Lyman Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
floods its congregation into the streets,
but the holiness evaporates in half an hour.

On hollow flats, the city acres stretch along
Interstate 80, Wyoming Highway 30,
removed from Bighorn and the buttes
and away from Green River and green Idaho.

Here, the Shoshone came for piñon harvest
in late summer but now New Americans
come for cheap real estate—a solace
for isolated families and broken bachelors.

These men talk of the past and Boise
where they could find an honest strip club.
They carry knives to carve their vocabulary
into diner tables and stab a glory hole into the toilet stall.

Though, none have courage enough to fuck a stranger
as they fester in work then liquored exhaustion.
Elsewhere, they would manifest crime and perversion,
but this town gives no opportunity for either.

I accelerated a 16-foot Penske back to the interstate
with blended bourbon and gasoline,
leaving Lyman, its Christians,
and the grime of isolation.

We kept our plans

We kept our plans for the week
when the weather held out
we spent the night together
when we found a reason to leave the house

The moon was young that month
as it waned and preached to us
The wind was stronger than my car
spun in eighteen wheel Volvo dust

I'll fight till the solstice
to hear you and the finches sing
and I hope the neighbors hear us
break everything.

We're still alive but it's daytime
we're still hopeful but stoplights
broke up the old drag line.

We never wanted our sore throat
days to be illuminated,
we were cold and angry
drunk and sedated.

We found torment
on the faces of our friends
when working the dead-end
came to only half the rent.

We broke from the greening block
as redbuds and bridesmaids
and our empty houses talk.

30 Seconds

For thirty seconds, my shutter opened
to flashlight paint and river snow.

Frost tautened my shoulders
and our laughs clouded the air.

We protected ears and hands
like our molecules were miracles.

We folded useless hand warmers
in our palms and huddled to the cars.

The February night fractured in half
and now my stomach ruins me

when you come to mind
and I warm myself in the kitchen.

Kill the dull echo

I woke to adolescent longing for her
or at least how I imagine her to be.

And though I trained myself to drift
in hollow desire, I'm feverish now for a cure.

So I kill the dull echo of my twin bed
by forming my lips to whistle

a dream song more cheerful in its lust
like an open convertible in summer.

The road melts my tires and resolve
and I remember her again.

I wouldn't have expected

I wouldn't have expected your hair to turn that color
of the north hill when it bloomed and pollinated
too early in the year.

I knew, though, the grass stains
from tackling old friends around the RC airplane field
would endure till now.

The soil has been kind for catching me
and I haven't learned to expect your newness.

Family, join me in a tradition of joy

Family, join me in a tradition of joy
we never cultivated before.

Sow christmas and cinema
and 'company at the door'
across the warming spring dirt.

Winter has been my forced strength
and solemnity has been yours;
silence has been my defense
and morality has been yours.

At nine, I was stubborn at each command
to read aloud or volunteer an answer
of 'milky way' or '56' or 'Jefferson.'

I taught myself resistance
to Mom's goddamn protocol
of openness and kindness
to my unknown cousins.

My silence bred quiet pride
at a classmate's misspoken word
or Pastor's mistaken Salvation metaphor.

I gained too early the habit
of erased contentment.

I let myself be unknowable
for the safety of my pride
and false construct of my happiness.

Family, come with me and kill
this thief of joy.

I made art my joy's surrogate,
enraptured in the lines and space and color
of cheap cereal packaging
and company letterhead.

I bore my faith through
eyesight and fingertips,
shaping glass into broad elms,
paint into planets, and ink into
the silhouettes of four women.

I measured myself against Monet,
thankful for the impossible distance
and willing to let his godly brushstrokes
be my severed inroads to joy.

Family, find a new direction; don't follow me
when I'm outside my mind and inside film.

Poetry grew downward through us all
the way rain dampens an old oak--
from father to sister to each brother to me,
and I'm nourished by the trickle.

In the ink rows I find the margin of Impressionism,
freeing me from my sureness in color.

Monet lets me doubt the blueness
of morning port, and Manet reminds me
the surreal tint of blood red.

Family, walk in step with me
and let approximation free you.