Two Truths and a Lie

The sudden rush from nothingness

casts a certain spell;

the unfamiliar smell

of a stranger’s sheets,

the daring potential

of the push, the pull,

a promise to unkeep.

In college, I hooked up

with Aaron Carter in his tour bus

after he played a concert stale

in a venue full of women who

were stuck, like old gum on the bottom

of a school desk.

I gave him a name

and a phone number that wasn’t mine.

When I was 21 couch-surfing

in Paris, I fucked a 46 year old man

just to see if I could

dangle the facets of fantasy

watch the prisms break off

dancing in his hungry eyes. I tried to warn him, declared

every god as limitless

but two months

later when he toured the U.S.,

I broke his damn dry

in Missoula, Montana

at the Dirty Dollar down

by the railroad tracks

shooting shots of whiskey

with another man. He listened

at the door while we had sex

in the bar bathroom.

The next morning he flew back

home to Paris three weeks early

& I wasn’t sorry

& I wasn’t sad

& I don’t regret

That grass grew golden

& I grew up

in a high desert summer

next to Rattlesnake Creek watching

the black and red Diamondbacks

coiled by the river’s sunshade.

Foothills slither, not unlike

our own entangled limbs, ready

to strike at any given moment, a desire

to conquer, to devour

the body whole

with unlocked jaws,

I will not, I will not, I will.