Harleen Seventy

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I slurred my surprise, like
errant waves

Gorgeous men in the
August fatigue

The nights pressed ahead,
the edge of the known world
like lapis

I thought the
unthinking bug-like dark
was dapper

Two conflating into one
cooling, conciliatory sweetness

My tongue lain with sticky sweet mirth
and dreamless sleep

The dirt of being singleminded
was all over me,
a scar layer of plaque

Who says we can’t
have the slutty past back

I climb the
pale altar, to
turn death’s mayhem around

Shrewdly-timed episodes of
feminine woe

August dealt in curious things,
in feelings that were misheard