Day­tona Beach, St. Paul, 2007-2009

We bombed down to Day­tona.
We had packed seven to the car;
I was Her­mes among the satyrs.
I first met Liz at a tourist bar,
the kind with taxi­der­mied al­li­ga­tors.

She had aban­doned her soror­ity.
(Two score Tri-Delts hound­ing jello shots
all lemon-mouthed and their hair pulled taut,
rapt in ec­sta­tic fun­gi­bil­ity.)

We brown­bagged down the thor­ough­fare
the per­am­bu­late ex­em­plar, all ha­la­tion and coro­nas
and give-away shades to fight the glare.
After a short ride in the el­e­va­tor,
she got me stoned on her motel bal­cony
perched high above the park­ing lot.

Eliz­a­beth, cursed by fate,
she was born in Min­neapo­lis,
a de­scen­dant of the Huguenots.
She was sin­gu­lar and sin­gle, un­abashed and un­at­tached;
I was the loyal op­po­si­tion, the stick part of the match.
She was the lotus eat­ing prag­ma­tist
and I was her dot­ing repro­bate.

And when the week was over, it was al­most nightly calls.
After grad­u­a­tion, we moved to­gether to St. Paul.

But we were never meant to be any­thing other than long dis­tance
and all those well mean­ing sen­ti­ments
were re­placed by the tele­phone anaphora,
tem­pered by more than dis­ap­point­ment.

I was going to get us back on course,
I de­clared one night, out drink­ing.
(Mem­o­randa from the cap­tain’s desk
drafted while the ship was sink­ing.)
But we could not save every­thing.
There was no sin­gle uni­fy­ing ges­ture,
no roses in the rushes.
We’d fash­ioned wings out of wax and string
and we had ended up on crutches.

I was being dif­fi­cult, she was being dif­fi­dent.
She once said it was like we shared a birth­day,
but our horo­scopes were dif­fer­ent.

We were never going to be Bonny and Clyde
but Eliz­a­beth, at least she tried.
And the clos­est that we ever got
was “I love you, with some caveats.”

Odessa, TX, Au­gust 2011

I got a job in mar­ket­ing, still liv­ing in St. Paul,
got a stu­dio apart­ment in an okay neigh­bor­hood.
(morn­ing sun­light, ra­di­a­tor, hard­wood)
Joined a church, apo­s­ta­tized; a gym.
I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the Doors again
and a neigh­bor hav­ing loud sex through the wall.

There was a con­fer­ence we were host­ing
on so­cial media and re-brand­ing
(as­tro­turf­ing and ex­pand­ing)
value-added blog pars­ing and post­ing.


My man­ager, who re­fused to go, elected me his proxy.
Oh west Texas, shin­ing buckle of the Noth­ing Belt,
where the kids throw rocks at pass­ing cars
and huff air­plane epoxy.
I pic­tured al­most liv­ing in the hotel bar
or slump­ing through shit-hole happy hours
down­ing wa­tered down and sweet­ened sours.
I could not en­vi­sion a week in Odessa
be­yond con­ti­nen­tal break­fast from a fiber­board cre­denza
(cof­fee pots and juice de­canters,
hy­acinths in plas­tic planters.)

Laid over in Dal­las, strangers in miniskirts,
corun­dum eyes and halite teeth.
Seda­tives and Cinnabon.
At a cow­boy bou­tique near my con­course,
I bought a pair of boots with a wing motif.
The night’s last con­nec­tion
dual prop and nearly empty.
The tar­mac an er­satz Rothko.
I had the flight at­ten­dant move me;
I wanted to be too drunk to sit in the exit row.
The nar­colep­tic’s aim­less lust.
Port side, as­cend­ing, neon zig­gu­rats.
The roads spi­raled out with­out a plan,
con­crete frac­talled out to macadam,
which then branched out into dust.
The dead lawn con­tin­uum,
the de­riv­a­tive, the par­tial sum.
Sodium light war­bling in par­al­lax.

The con­fer­ence it­self came and went
wholly with­out in­ci­dent
and I spent most nights in, in a fucked-in chair
re­vis­ing Power Point slides in my un­der­wear.
In a week, I hadn’t left the hotel grounds.
(I hadn’t re­ally cared to plus I didn’t have a car.)
So I saun­tered down to the hotel bar
hop­ing the Akron guys would buy a cou­ple rounds.

All dark and bricked by a shitty mason,
the decor was steak­house mod­ern, all fake an­tique and drab.
A motto, routed in a maple slab:
The Best Lit­tle Pour­house in the Per­mian Basin.

A townie pulling for the Braves,
some cheese­s­ticks some­one mi­crowaved.
The bar­tender spoke in pic­tograms,
the earnest pony­tail of an ex­iled An­ge­leno.
The local Stone­henge in weath­ered Po­laroids,
the Graboid coun­try, the bake-sale void.
Yel­lowed clip­pings from the Re­porter-Telegram.
And on the bar, cres­cent cuala­cino.  

With a fake I.D. and a blank ex­pres­sion,
a young ge­ol­o­gist, perched hunched upon a barstool
from UT Per­mian Basin sum­mer school
(a school named after a de­pres­sion)
drank with a gusto tan­ta­mount to con­fes­sion.

My com­pli­men­tary drink tick­ets had ex­pired,
and dis­ap­pointed, I re­tired.

World’s Wildest Po­lice Chases,
I Dream of Jean­nie, Willie Bloomquist steal­ing bases,
Billy Mays’ heir ap­par­ent vend­ing.
Twelve Mon­keys, recut for cable t.v.
(ad­ver­tis­ers hate un­happy end­ings.)
I ri­fled through the lo­goed lagniappes
and show­ered in a bathing cap.
The cof­fee maker hacked and coughed
and sput­tered as I turned it off.
Di­al­ing ran­dom num­bers on the hotel phone
elic­its val­ley dweller logatomes.
I made a fortress with the bed­ding
and de­cided to give the hotel bar an­other chance.

Shots with a brides­maid from a bor­ing wed­ding,
who ducked out dur­ing the first dance,
garbed in lilac taffeta and tulle.
The bar­tender put Seven-Up in my Moscow Mule
and so we sulked out to­wards the pool.
From the div­ing-board, still robed, alight­ing,
she was phocine in the re­cessed light­ing.
She mo­tioned that I ought to join her,
and was dis­ap­pointed by my re­join­der.

Sirens bleat­ing dirges, lash me to the smoke­stack of a train.
My an­ces­tors shout­ing ep­i­thets
writ­ten in a ghost al­pha­bet.
The dream of tum­bling from an air­plane.

I was still sleep­ing on a deck chair
when the first fire trucks ar­rived.
The evac­u­a­tion sig­ni­fiers, the smoke dis­plac­ing air
the first re­spon­der pid­gin, the T.V. an­chor twang.
Some of the other guests hud­dled half alive,
stu­pe­fied, with eyes like tar­gets,
high on monox­ide and the chem­i­cals in car­pet
bare­foot in bathrobes, mum­bling a jack­a­lope slang.
A hotel clerk mouthed a Pater Nos­ter
as he crossed my name off of a ros­ter.
(It was at that mo­ment I re­al­ized I’d sur­vived.)

I felt I had noth­ing to con­tribute
to the fire mar­shal’s re­port,
so I took a taxi to the air­port.