HONEY DUSK DO SPRAWL
When the tulip tree's all damseled out in violet, when I
can't pass
a stray window without
hungering into its mirror, I check to see if I'm still
myself. When I'm the girl who daydreams
her own funeral, then asks you about the salivary
habits of ponies, that hissing Shetland,
Princess, muzzles up, gray-lipped,
from your mother's childhood. When her preacher father
found only the full sink's grimy porcelain, he'd pour the
cobalt vase
half full with Jack Daniel's, and a few
dried forsythia rinds plumped
back yellow. He'd weave through the kitchen,
and she'd escape to the barn, until her palms
ran with brown sugar. Tulip tree-wise, honey, we might be
safe for the season. The face of the childhood pony always
torqued for coarse sugar--a bluntness
to the need, like trying to read someone's
lips in a dream. A hiss that rolls
all the way here. Outside, the wind-raved date palms
walk their razors with the sound.