Published
I. In Baltimore, the sexiest thing
you can be is a girl on a farm.
My pony’s name was Quick Draw.
I loved him like you
love the lottery.
He was so small they shuttled
him to the stables in a minivan,
little Shetland standing in the pasture
between front seat and back.
My trainer always kept a crop
in her back pocket.
Never saw her without one.
In the tack room, she crushed
Rocket Pops bedazzled by freezer burn
up against the back of the ice box.
She told us if we fell off
and yelled ice cream
before we hit the ground
we could have one for free.
Something to sweeten the fall.
Something so we wouldn’t
be afraid to carry on.
She got killed by a car
crossing the street to bring in
her Christmas cards,
crop flattened in the frost.
II. In Los Angeles, the sexiest thing
you can be is a girl in a car
stick shifting into the solitary
headlight of the sun.
And this is just to say:
it’s riskier to cross the street
than to fly across the country
and fall in love or something like it.
The sunshine pushed us up against the
back seat. Black leather. Quick draw—
popped the bullets sitting shotgun
and everything’s coming up Marlboro:
it’s all sugar, traffic in the breeze,
traipsing naked through
the turrets of The Chateau.
III. In New York, the sexiest thing
you can be is a name on a list.
But I’m here at this party
without you, basking alone
in the bar bathroom light.
You told me it looks like
I got everything
I ever wanted
but no one will ever
call me Alice again.
Naming a thing
makes it harder to kill.
It’s the kind of love that
keeps the radio running
even after the car has crashed.
Kiss and call it love.
Cry and call it California.
How quickly we curdle
into these dead ends.
In search of something sweeter,
I am still left falling short of it.
But I am still left calling out
ice cream, calling out your name.
