Baby girl’s got a heart like a fish pond at feeding time;
neck like whiplash; white peaches growin’ on the fuzz of her lips.
She’s everything Wet Wild & Wonderful, that West Virginia kinda love;
Sweet butter staining the kiss of her neck. Vicky says
You don’t draw blood from a girl like that. Just sugar water; just a string
of sweet hummer-birds. And if I were lighter. A little more blue
In the eye, she says: You’d be like that too. Sugah n’ hum. Hum n’ sugah.
I ask: What am I made of then, Miss Vicky? “You? Oh, honey.
You got an entire evergreen in your mouth. You ain’t sweet but you
something. A darker song, one with con - vic - shun.”
With the seats laid flat on their bellies, Baby girl and I lay
under a moon-roof wide open; feet like silver hooks out the back window,
Sinking summer’s damp lip onto our toes. El Rodo’s freckled fingers
filled tobacco into his pipe, smoke building over our heads in the shapes
Of our First Cities; Nameless Cities; Cities we called our own.
In the wet drive of the highway, Baby girl spun the window closed, &
Set the sun lower over the Potomac, while I cupped the last air
from the breeze, collected her river salt in my palm.
Tell me, Baby girl said. Have you ever been kissed? & in the night, with the
moon-roof wide open, the thick leaves like dark banks that the sky
Rivered through, I shook my head slow, and she gave me her clammy hands
And Baby girl, with apple slice-me. Sugar on her pink. Pink on my tongue.
Melted in me; Oh sweet, oh low; Hair coiled together. Copper wire flint.
Little fins in our chest sput-sputter; sput and sputter, Our mouths,
Small and forgiving,
like bows shooting arrows & pinning apples to the trees.