Poem: Buttpinch

Halfway through a thought, my foiler

love who loathes one-sided speeches

gives a goose upon my breeches,

calipers a cheek as if to

measure hot-air quotients, maybe

as if squeezing for a boil, or

checking the temperature of the air around

us as we walk through neighborhoods

known, on close but ill-attended ground

we amble cross together though

We generally spend our evenings on separate routes.

I remain working or out

Charting extracurricular courses;

she writes to men of foreign women

crowned or bloody or riding horses,

her own small feifdom carved and polished.

But here we are linked by index and thumb.

***

^{c. 2002-2003}