the wraparound and the scootabout

The Wraparound and the Scootabout

The lamp should never have been there in the first place.

When we get home from skating, it's already started to get dark

and the air damp and heavy with the perfume of tropical flowers,

pale blossoms girding the bashful brownstones, even a cautious

turtle, with a chain attached to the loop on its shell so it wouldn't

be steered to species extinction and from there to death, a topic

that soon resolved itself with me lying face-down in a damp bed

from distant lands like Peru or Zanzibar or the Seychelle Islands,

a look that lasts a beat too long and that conveys the knowing

worse was to come. But before I tell you about the fight after

wearing a yellow blazer and a tie with green anchors on it,

enjoy chewing through bursts of sweet and salty and sour.