Against Utility
Every story's true : summer, I'm fourteen, mowing
my way through a fenced backyard : carving
a name : curve by stem : each pass over the thick
grass : Kelly : + would that I were Woody + this
merely the late-night television of my childood : let he
who's never wanted all longing to fit into one single
singable word step in dogshit next time he's got
to mow : those humming summer afternoons of
youth : cicadas deafening in their sexcalls or what
ever they sang in trees : the soundtrack of an innocent : some
classmate I never knew was likely right then streets
away learning how a blowjob felt while
I etched a crush's name into grass : here's why +
how the story's true : the motor stalled out halfway
through the y : gasless it spun down to nothing :
+ the crushing thrum of silence that rushed in :
or not silence but the sound of what had been under
-neath while I stomped around : my heart's consonants
+ vowels : my epic gesture while I shouted along
to Van Halen on my Walkman though of course
I'd never tell Kelly I hungered for her every inch
even when her whiteblond hair went green in summer
from too much chlorine : then the biking away, gas can
balanced on bike's handlebars : then the returning to just
barely able to make out the outline of the K : the
high midday heat : the ways sunlight obliterated my
tender shadings : +now the Van Halen bridge : when
the guitars wail back in : the yes : gas back
in the machine : cord pulled : cicadas again over
-powered by the mower's fourstroke : + the boy
I was : + the believer I'll never not be : I cranked
the music + mowed over the whole thing : goodbye
Kelly : suddenly steely sure that naming love
was one thing but trusting it through erasure some
thing bigger than the little boy crushes I only till
then knew : plus the ground already knew :
so we tell ourselves : scribbling wishes on scraps
we stuff in bottles + set free : what's beneath
us seethes with what we can't say : all we
can't possibly know how to begin : to articulate :
Floating Wolf
