The Last Time

I saw the primary color

toy planes

I want to land on Carrie’s landing-strip

1969 at a corner store

on Watkins Lake Road in Drayton Plains, Michigan

I asked my mother about it last month

she said you could get tomato sausage there

they were behind glass

I had no money

and a strange man bought me one.

In Chinatown today

I visited 3 stores looking for small plastic planes

to send you one with the poem I wrote at lunch

(not at an Olivetti typewriter store).

Fuselage nose to tail 2 inches

wing span 2 inches—

I think the first one that should land on you

should be green.

I never had a favorite color

but used to answer that when dumb-ass adults

(mostly teachers)

would ask.

I think of you crying naked in your bed

in Oceanside

my hand flying the plane over your territory.