Art Gallery

Mercury left me in Paris.

He may have been an old man,

but his wrinkled hands nicked

the wallet from my pocket out in the daylight.

His sulfur lips pecked my cheek once,

just after telling me the names of his freckles,

the volcanic dents in his skin. “Poets,” he whispered.

The scruff of his beard felt like water on a burn.

All of it was rather nice, the tilt of his axis,

that was until he took my last twenty.