Night is an overweight woman who strips to old songs. I've seen her shove the sun behind galaxies in crowded rooms, and at parties snap her lacy bra. She slung out the North Star like a nipple on a glittered tit. Voyagers saw it. In her parlor we dared to touch. Night is a pushy girl, she was jealous of this match. Comets shot like eight balls across her table of green felt. She tilted her head and laughed and laughed and laughed. She peeled gold rings off of planets instead of fingers. Or cigars. Day had worn the sky like a ski jacket. Night fell loosely on her large legs like a pair of faded jeans. We should have stayed a little longer and listened to her Polish jokes. But it was safe in the motel room. The moon was a comma at the end of a good line, you turned and pulled me like a slip of paper and blasted your pen like a rocket ship through my nebulous words. It was the Fourth of July and all the stars were dotdotdots. We should have listened to the gypsy on the pier when she pushed my palm away and said, "You'll be more than a lover, much much more." Plastic bracelets crashed toward her elbows like sharp waves warning us to stop. Night turned cold. She pouted and was too proud to play another game. Now I'm hung up in the bathroom and you're on the road being blinded by the headlights of a speeding car. Our lips chap and sprout milky sores. Our faces show their age. Street lamps burst and spin halos like horseshoes and clovers in a slot machine. While night drops her G string like a pink eyelid or a pun and coughs from the corner of a cabaret: "I've won, I've won."
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Warren Wedin warren.wedin@csun.edu