The one who held her hair up off her neck
and asked me to unclasp her dress

The young arrive adorned.
They shiver in the light,

The dust of the stable
still on me,
I sidled on up

Always the unbearable—the sting of her demands,
the threats, the way she kept me from my friends—

Ava taught me how to smoke
in the woods behind our high-school dorm.

I came from a place with a hole in it,
my body once its body, behind a beard of hair.   
And after I emerged, all dripping wet,

Not that it was needed that much, this much
was clear. A little cleverness would do

When they passed through a city, it was others knew it first.
The man claimed no lift in his shoe but an advertisement for the dance

If it’s loveliness you want, here, take some,
hissed the black fairy. Waiting for the string quartet,
on the corner, denatured I wondered what the heck.

I sit on the dock for a haircut and watch
as summer spreads out, relieving the general,
indiscriminate gray, like a mouthful of gin