Tempe

---

           for Michael

Moon still loose over the city,

still loose over the fields. Still between

the thin lips of clay. We, still boys

who wanted other boys. Still ice slipped

in the canyons of our mouths, still melting

and melting fast. Still inevitable.

Melting fast, we are born regardless

of the sky, the summer drought

it gave us and will eventually

take back. For now I hold

Arizona like your name

in the brush of my mouth.

In the brush, we are still

beyond the thin

archipelagos of dune graves,

leading ourselves back

to the city we believed in,

but never knew.

We never knew where to find

the spiders, the careful webs

of Heaven for our strange

bodies. One night I swear

I saw two crowns of silk

spun fresh across the sand.