I’m kissing his poster, on my knees on my bed.
We’re both children, in a way. Maybe we stop
at fifteen. We could easily be in the fogged-
up car at Tillywilly Quarry. We haven’t, you know,
yet. It begins here. The rest seems like a vast
openness. I cannot imagine past his hand
up my skirt any more than he could imagine handing
back his songs to silence, or lying on his deathbed
without Priscilla or Kathy or Linda or Jo or vast
numbers of other girls called in to stop
his mind enough so he could sleep. What we know
together is half-shut eyes, call it a fog
of desire, if you want, but there is something in the fog
that is not us, an alertness of mind, a hand
running over the entirety of what we know
and calling it good. No matter whose bed
you get in later, something in your mind stops
here: you and Elvis touch lips across the vast
distance. Don’t sap this up: the truth is vaster
than the jewel-belted icon stumbling in a fog
of barbiturates. The vibration of the universe never stops.
It’s all song, the hum of molecules in the hand
and lips, and what goes away comes back, a flower bed
of humming, spilling over the edge of what you know.
You think the fat women who cried didn’t know
what they cried for when he died? It’s no vast
distance between them and me. Our souls are bedded
in our hungry bodies, taking advantage of the fog
at Tillywilly. “Please let me put my hand
there,” he says, and being scared, he stops
there. Nothing ever felt this good, to stop
on that note, the mouth wide open, no
thought left, no design, waiting for the hand
of God to move on or intervene. It’s vastness,
it’s plenty, it’s human spring, pure song, a fog
of wastefulness. You get out of bed
the rest of your life knowing it’s Elvis’s bed
you’ve come from—vast, vibrating. On the one hand,
you’re stopped, flesh and bone; on the other, you’re a song.