We smoke the roach you sweet-talked
crabby Lauren into parting with,
you drop ash in my hair, on the wall Joe Strummer
smashes a guitar, slow-hand Chaucer nudges my lips—
. . . than longen folk to goon . . .
We’re not exactly tripping any more, but streetlights
still flash their porous rainbows, the soft windows tremble and sigh,
and when you shake Revolver onto the turntable,
“She Said She Said” fattens the night air like a tulip.
. . . the tendre croppes, the yonge sonne . . .
Already I’m afraid to leave you, already I’m lonely.
Eye-jangled and forlorn, I watch you rattle cellophane,
tear open a pack of Marlboros, cough and strike a match,
suck up the fumes of one more cigarette.
. . . Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth . . .
The tulip sways. She bows low, she offers me her red throat.
. . . so priketh him nature in hir corages . . .
What hurt, what hunger do I dread?
"April," first published in Salamander 10, no. 2 (2005).