I was by madness wooed.
No flowers on porches
with swings and fireflies,
no wrapped-with-ribbon chocolates
but a stained brass lamp he found
sifting debris in a skid-row alley
on trash day. He gave me a sun-smoothed
stone pried from a desert back road
when he was lost one high noon
just driving and collecting bits
of yucca gone gray and bony
as amputated fingers. I loved this
and his whispered recitations
of crimes and jails, gay bars,
police, whores, drugs.
His first wife a suicide.
He showed me scars where a knife
cut and the residues from accidents,
drunk nights and car crashes.
He grew orchids on his roof
and slept there in an August
of derelict hotels burning, smoke
rushing up like a gutted down pillow
into streets thick and red with ambulances
screaming the air raw and bleeding.
Then he said he was wanted
by the State of Arizona
as if thousands of bodies were waiting,
acres of skin, writhing on sheets,
legs spread and begging
and I begged.

Copyright 2005-2006, Kate Braverman.