into every life some possible lover should come.    you don’t quite catch his name the first time through.     call him bryan or ryan
you met him at the antelope petting zoo.     or on the steps of city hall at the yearly die-in: he was a body among so many other bodies
some furry and with horns, some able.     some glistering in sweat, some you heaved upon like amphibious d-day craft quitting the ocean
some unable to stand erect, their soft boyparts pressed against you, the way lunchmeat feels when it falls from the sandwich onto your legs

all the untouchable figures outspread upon the asphalt, as if it’s natural to recline this way, playing possum, flashing the word vacancy
glowing snuff-colored against the motel background of a pornographic magazine carelessly tossed against the curb.     recognize one face
among the twenty-three airbrushed faces, slightly withdrawn, obviously stoned, nimbused in a union of illapsing smoke and incandescence

isn’t he the one who looked upward into your gawp as if a deathbed held him against you.     he was living, then.     you both were living
and the vessel protruded, your hull dragging up onto the beach, his carcass already a carcass on the sand, no, he was a darling critter
a feral thing, but he struck you, he bit you, and you broke inside and the condom broke, shoddy piece, princeling, posturer, dirty dirty beast