At Millwood Bayou –
A rotten uncanniness.
I hoisted you over the netting
And the nesting buckshot shells
Where we would sit flush on the water,
Thinking on the marijuana
We’d baled in Piggly bags,
And disregard ourselves.
They are the colors of forgetting:
Jaundiced rebel flags,
Boys smoking over the stone-trough.
The snakes were drinking
Black, blackgrey water.
Begonias sieved through a wretched tennis racket.
This is my only secret.
I come from a place that has bayous.
I cannot forget.
They have two colors –
Blue, greyblue.
I’m unequipped for this memory
And the red gullers –
Forget about them.
From the dim, bluegreen cinema
Coming out into fieldgray:
Heliopsis, bombast,
Spent chaw cans and skinheads.
A rotten uncanniness
Mangling our mood.
We made baffling, baffling color.
I’d did not baffle us
And that’s another secret.
It’s mine to share.
I leave this like my other letters
Dangling in the air.