novelty

tear down that mtn, she does
we do can
there are tries alloverthe place
tries swarming around me, I'm swatting at them
I am in an apron I'm sitting on the curb beside the gasstation in the hot sunlight
in thick tights for summer
I am a teen, I know
but I am thinking abt new orleans a lot
wondering?
when, will we?
is it a novelty, now
is everything abt me novelty?
you fell in love with a novelty
it was too romantic, too impossible beautiful faraway to be anything
but
words, pics, drunk affections
like time pulled over
in the big novel countryside
and then the countryside shattered
into a million impossible pieces
and I was shown in the bustedup reflections
the impossible
our faces, bodies, voices crunching out
us, irl
the beautiful invisible novelty
that we were

song for the holiday inn at casa grande arizona

And here, still, warmest pavement beneath barest feet, the hair of the dog literal & figurative, below and over. The glimmer of aqua poolwater waving at me. My own salty dog, my palest pink dress. The palest coloring of arizona no matter where. Today I took a walk down a long road, over three miles and they claiming it's one-hundred-and-seven degrees. I scoff and drip. Would it be nearly that hot? I can take it better than I thought. No loneliness set-in, just the flies of me, the dogs and me. The grasshoppers give a great chase. Our feet bare, the courtyard of a holiday inn bare, save for our voices. The salt cutting the grapefruit, the liquors. My mind beginning again after air-conditioned dreams, the sweat congealing me cold, soaking a dress till freezing. A fly walks on my lemon, and I am fully alive in a chickenless existence. Thriving in pastels, in arizona keeping me her prisoner once more.