poem: ego v. arcadia

waiting for him by the end-point of the audoritirum
she sees his smile in side-profile, she runs
out to meet him before the curtain goes
and the next day, they are all
over the news. she sits chain-smoking in the glass
patio set, criss-cross, holding the book with
one hand, glass of soda with the other. sky is that
wet tongue texture you only get near
the Atlantic; they can hear gulls and midtown. he watches
from the grimy kitchen window: her hair goes straight
back, black oil, some of it streaming down
the sweatshirt-in-fog that has been thrown over
her pale ribecage and breasts in the delicate way
skinny people get to wear clothes: her form, her
internality, completely in his
hands. never had he thought — it will turn out like this,
and yet — biology pushes through. you think
you understand first snow, baby in puffy
discount winter-pants, baby hoisted before the door of
friends of friends and even they say, son,
come in, maybe the lust you had been expecting and waiting
for will not come in this form. the ice-water way
she plays mother to you. her long skinny back
and you lick her down clean, even her snake’s face turns
out a flower. the watching reveals someone, who,
in her precocious convent way, waited for you like
anima wanting animus: she looks up
from the book and smiles.