Glove
it's a love poem
The weekend before I went to the hospital you came down for an unceremonious visit, to watch me play in the Village, some dive, a dizzying epoch; no one came, I was under- water. My hands were always cold so you brought me gloves and it was Valentine’s Day. “How wonderful to be in love,” I thought, “how wonderful to have someone to want all my fingers in- tact, someone to kiss my lips chapped.” After taking you from behind I crawl- ed across the bed to cry, just outside, and you didn’t follow me. I thought the air would still but on it spun, lockjaw Tide carried me bridal-style, eddying: “How wonderful to be in love,” I thought, “how wonderful to hide your tears. The eyes are just collateral.” I found the gloves in August and giggled at the notion of needing them at all, summer had come to the door like an old friend (“Hello, you,”), it was Los Angeles, my girlfriends came, tallboy in my jacket pocket, Luck like powder, like ash, like dust on the dash it was all forever and the salt stung my eyes. How wonderful to hang the sun again, how wonderful to never imagine my mother when she comes down for the closing shift, comes to get my things, to make arrangements, to bless the body, to sit by the Pacific awhile, my mother when she finds gloves in the back of my underwear drawer, and never recog- nizes the smell as any-thing but mine
