Angels

Cigarettes pilfered two at a time

from her mother’s purse, slender black candles

flickering all around us, dripping

a translucent, silver wax. Her father’s

favorite records, Brubeck and Baker,

sailing out the French doors,

over the patio and pool;

her father’s gold razor

sliding over my toes, to the arch of each

foot, to the ankle, to the knee, and beyond.

The skin of my legs tingled.

Over the fine bone china bowl,

filled now with hair and foamy water,

angels presided, a chain of them

tangled wing to wing

around the rim—in the too pale light,

in the artist’s rendering—neither male

nor female but beautiful still.

We’d grunted the old cheval mirror

across the room to the bed,

and I could see her from both sides,

breasts and buttocks as she knelt

to kiss from my legs little ruby after ruby

of blood. A wedding portrait

hung above us, and two slabbed, mugshot smiles

peered from the nightstands—mother here,

father there, his glasses by the clock,

her night-mask in the drawer.

We didn’t speak, we didn’t need to:

the negotiations of young flesh,

this for that, mine for yours—one more coin

in the bank of beautiful sins.

I could have had anything

I wanted, and I wanted it all,

whoever I was, that peeled boy

so naked there was no skin

between me and the girl, there was nothing,

so that what I remember most

is the hour just after we stopped,

when she eased back down my legs to kneel

at my feet and hold my heels in her palm,

until nail by nail she was finished,

her lips kissing the air, her breath

coming cool to dry the polish,

an icy burn blown upward through my bones.

She rolled me over and lay down on me

until we slept. I woke

in the dark, to burnt wicks smoking

all around and a dream falling away

as I stretched, the weight on my back