love is just emotion on the make
my pale white old man’s frog’s legs hang overboard, off my roof as i shout across to you on yours, the alley canyon between us is too far to jump. i wouldn’t anyway. my naked heel depresses the rubber tar surface and leaves a Robinson Crusoe’s ‘Friday’ foot impression on a black sand beach. if you smile i can’t see it through the gauze of this bloodshot night even with the haze of a fat yellow moon. you gesture with nicotine fingers (the hot orange tip circling like the manic gesture of a Bette Davis drag queen). watery emotional voices sloppy with booze make me wonder about Everything all over again as i draw another blank. in a snap i could sit next to you, but best not. not tonight. like housewives yakking across a line of sheeted laundry we’re safe if not sound. your black pant legs end in damp sockless sneakers off the edge of our rooftop dock-o’-the-bay. i click a picture that’s too dark to register. the bell-clinking of ice-in-glass is worth the whole damn night.
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
About The Paragraphs and how to order
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