At the Padre Hotel in Bakersfield, California

It’s Saturday night and all the heterosexuals

in smart little dresses and sport coats

are streaming into what we didn’t know

was the hottest spot between Las Vegas and L.A.

Janet and I are in jeans and fleece—not a tube of lipstick

or mascara wand between us. Grayheads:

a species easy to identify without a guidebook—

the over-the-hill lesbian couples of the Pacific Northwest.

Janet’s carrying our red-and-white cooler with snacks for the road

across the marble tiles of the Art Deco lobby

when we turn and see the couple

entering through the tall glass doors, slicing

through the crowd like a whetted blade. The butch

is ordinary enough, a stocky white woman

in tailored shirt and slacks, but the confection—

no, the pièce de résistance—whose hand she holds

is of another genus entirely.

Her cinnamon sheen, her gold dress

zipped tighter than the skin of a snake.

And her deep décolletage, exposed enough for open-heart surgery.

She’s a yacht in a sea of rowboats.

An Italian fountain by Bernini.

She’s the Statue of Liberty. The Hubble Telescope

that lets us gaze into the birth of galaxies.

Oh, may they set that hotel room ablaze—here

in this drab land of agribusiness and oil refineries

outdoing Pittsburgh as the top polluted city in the nation—trash it

like rock stars, rip up the 300 thread-count sheets,

free the feathers from the pillows.

And may that grande femme be consumed

right down to the glitter on her sling-back four-inch stilettos

and whatever she’s glued on her magnificent skin

to keep the plunge of that neckline from careening clear off the curve.