Say timbales, say conga, / Say sinew and stilettos, / Say thunderclouds conjured / From a man's hard hands,

They remember women. Shoes, suits, & cars. All of it / more or less the same. How to use the tongue / until it empties mercy. Becomes a club, nightstick, stickpin / in a ghost serge suit, a velvet dick. Their sons who got mixed up / in this or that mess. Daughters gone & bruised by their father’s mirrors.

I turn through the hip-thrust music of falling blossoms. / Flank of mud & spit. We used to visit a river where dogs drank / bone & mounted shadows that were not dog.