I do too, mine soft and black,

made from rabbit’s fur.

Today, it nearly crossed the ring-road

sans my head, lured by the wind.

I grasped the brim

and held on with my gloved hand.

I smiled, catching my father,

being him.  All the long work

of figuring manhood out, responsible

and dark, suddenly lifting

like a shy clerk just given a raise.

Behind, a trail of gas stations,

small banks, the meat packing plant,

knocked over.  FBI Telexes

clatter like town gossips across America:

Barton Tare and Laurie Starr, dangerous

and armed.  How did it begin?

Neon wakes me, I peel back blinds

to jackhammer rain, shake a Lucky

from the pack, and light.

Behind, on the tangled bed, you are mine,

every inch of your easy hunger, your fear

cold and material in the night.

Where are we two going?  When we get

there, how will we know we’ve finally

arrived?  Mexico, possibly, but the bills

are marked and the Feds hot on our tails.

The first time we met, I shot six matches

off the crown on your head, at a carnival,

won five hundred bucks.  The moment

the matches flared, I knew my bullets

would always be true, direct.  You kill

out of a necessity verging on need, I

cannot squint the eye down to that degree,

my hand trembles at the sight of flesh targets.

Still, I’ll end up putting a bullet in your heart

up in the Lorenzo mountains, in the mist.

That first night I aimed and squeezed

I should not have missed.

You wake and call me over to the bed.

Then I’m down in your arms and kissed.

Your mouth sets off all four alarms.

How can a man be so made

from moments of early loss?

I was always gun crazy,

so good at one clear thing:

hitting what I could barely see.

I see nothing in the darkness now, only

one part moving on the bed, my body

pressed like a pistol

into the small of your cries.

stocks her cupboard well, unfolds

her chrome music stand nightly;

orders airline tickets in multiples,

for the same destination, only to

cancel them casually three weeks

later.  She invites order home,

and plays with it.  Studies things

for some quiet sake.  Hoards

passion, then lets it go to waste.

Marries haste to duller patience,

elegance to mad dancehall songs.

Is never wrong, until the last act.

Turns law to theatre, drama to

discipline with a long violin bow.

Cures nerves with ice and feathers.

My violinist is more than talk.

Her real vocation's not avocat.

Two blocks from Baker Street

she solves the petite mysteries

of marriage in garters from Paris, her

instrument held in two purple gloves.

You wait in the square, at the table under the striped umbrella.

She’s late: is this your next misunderstanding,

the wrong place name given, no one’s fault?—

or, and this is the part everyone hopes someone else will play:

did she step out into the eager arms of a tram?  Either way,

your sun–burnt waiter glares, displeased at

the meagre order: one cola, with a straw

while no one you know arrives in high heels, laughing, loud as life.