Triangular glasses, brumal volts, gin,
frescade of pearls, plucked, sunned olives,

grave albino onions, juniper nip & the cusp of snow,
we sip slow, as at a glacier’s lip. Holy day.

I’m thinking fingerbone salad, the marginalia
of Emily Brontë, intricate skeleton keys,

not blade but the pierced heart, the bow
to which torque must be applied.

That blue note of exile in your eyes.
Meeting mine you say the way you inhale

semen oysters rosewater ordure of armpit, footsole,
I smell time. I meaning you. You smell time.

Alone along the Interstate, later, runnels rapt into ice,
sun sinks, aguish, an amber smut, ruttish

behind black roofs, crotched ridge.
Why miss any chance to be changed?

I’m ready, you said, back in our niveous cups,
gelid narcotic by which I mentally undressed you.

You called my drink chaste. The intoxication
love brings when we mean to gladden,

mouths boreal and high. Terrified, beautiful.
Unashamed. They are the same.