"When is daybreak?" 

-- Denise Levertov

Saturday night: A lone saxophone whose groan 

cuts through four blocks of generic midsummer celebration,

the nausea of walking exhaustion,

an anticipation of orange juice.

It is an experiment in the collective, 

the eventual recoil from crowds,

and an indefatigable craving for the privacy of a ball cap.

Saturday night: Storage unit for fond recollections 

of the Trevi Fountain, 

prosciutto and melon, 

of how we got lost in the mirror coming to terms with our ugliness.

It is the acknowledgement of impossible pure pleasure

so long as enjoyment is riddled with a desire to possess  

or resentful of surrounding success.

Saturday night: Fluttering eyelids in the face of strangers, 

slowly drooping,

an exchange of differing perspectives on pork with a handsome Uzbek. 

It is overriding the memory of every previous Saturday with updated versions,

each assumingly better than the last 

though the atmospheric pressure 

to Laissez les bons temps rouler! is notorious for causing broken ribs and bankruptcy.

Saturday night: Sons squeezed through the eye of a needle,

daughters, a tube of Colgate toothpaste:

swimming in the dark to their respective apartments 

as prelude to a dream of the morning's hot shower 

while the remaining brothers and sisters seem unable--or willing--to master 

that delicate art of belonging to any one place.

For us, it is pitching a tent in a petri dish, 

digging the stakes into barstools,

and making camp at Lost Lake Cafe until whichever comes first:

the light of Sunday

or the humility to go home.

Your Roman nose can only keep me intrigued for so long.

It isn’t your fault I sold you myself          for a song

set to the key of an afterparty of white stripes

inhaled up a couple cavities on a sailboat called Souza.

I don’t care how you move in me.

I mean, it suits me on the most primordial bodily plane.

By definition          is this cruelty?

It’s just, you’re a bit like accidentally tasting perfume —

pleasure from it is derived only when applied correctly

as it appeals to a single sense.

Also, there is no such thing as an angel in red.

Those go by another name.

At best I am a barfly hovering over her mezcal cocktail.

What do you want, baby? is a loaded question.

If you really must know

I’d like to lie in my own bed          in my socks,

watching nothing but nature documentaries on BBC.

You see, I used to crucify poets who wailed about sex;

it’s overdone          give up the gun!

Scores of more subjects under the sun!

God no longer cares how we want to have fun!

Look at me now; see what I’ve become.

Because as a girl I wanted to be two things:

a storyteller and          a real woman,

operating under the illusion that intercourse with a man

had the power to make me either.

Darling, how can I bare to your infinite simplicity

the calling of a professional           confessional bleeder?

One who hemorrhages both sentimentality and sorrow for a living?

That I don’t give a damn about your car but adore your dog?

That with these words — if read aloud or in private —

I force us both down a Via Dolorosa of my own device, placing

you and I somewhere between gladiators and          The Smithsonian.

And by rendering you sympathetic

I paint myself grotesque,

fully aware these are the species of verses that would make

any sound mother squeamish.

To be fair, I don’t know what I would do with a daughter like me either!

So when I cried          “Terra firma!”

as we wobbled, foggy-eyed, off the vessel of our first morning

I was not peppering dialogue with paltry dead language,

but in my way attempting to convey

the understanding that empires and affairs

founded on water won’t last.

What I want is to have told you freely, I like everyone crave solidity,

though I’m learning to give

translations of ancient tongues          only to those who ask.