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Poolside
The host climbs out, soaked and spitting oaths,
and a teenage girl leaves the barbecue.
Two of those drinks your wife mixed,
bright pink and cheerful, and I’m
seeing double: breasts, twin headaches
exactly the same size await me
frowning from each temple, and a diptych
concusses the chatter: a car salesman
hitting his better half. A pygmy politics emerges
wherever two or more of you are gathered,
shopping together. All right, stop biting,
I’d much rather sleep with you than with
that other poltergeist. You’re greedy,
aren’t you? O Painted Laugh, why is your
belly convulsing? Can ‘a man’ become a sign
for ‘a muscular spasm’? Horoscope,
betray yourself, take me back to a feast,
if this is a feast, these glib flirtations,
the whole gang badly knocked out
by the mundane speech the flame attempts,
each sleep a cancelled cheque, as I
watch myself thinking of you, deracinated
Sweetheart, boarding a Greyhound.
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