AUGUST

Everything is full but she

keeps pumping on the inside

chintzing up the outside till her month becomes

a regular rococo whorehouse in an expanding economy.

Back and forth salaam salaam the sprinklers

graze and pray on plush

carpets of grass, beer becomes sweat, the heavy

air surrounds, mothers us to immobility, the mind

melts, the elements

slump, four fat uncles in their lawn chairs, while the flesh

well the flesh just ambles into town to get drunk

                                            with the ball players.

We knew this ripeness and we knew

her smiling, solitary

reaper.

The shiver slid

beneath the sunburn with the fatal

rightness of a shift to minor key:

she loved him, she dressed up in her gypsy best,

she left.