August

A Poem by I.F.W. Davis

Slipping never slid so well over the glaze in your eye;
the grout between your consonants cut short by moistened
wrists and the salt of another long Saturday night.

Indecisions sink faster than indiscretions but I've bed
with both- and I made up my mind months ago,
betting on a waiting game that punctures heels
like broken glass on asphalt in the sun of a Sunday afternoon.

Emotional discrepancy is the most beautiful plague
this side of the Mississippi, and I live for nothing more than
the death in impassionate confusion- laced across your lips
like the child our wallets were prepared to kill.

This is not your story any more than it was before
you tripped into my post-mortem chasm of teenage desperation,
and I have every intent of hiding my intentions-
even from teeth that wish they were whiter-

spitting sonnets at six am as long as the street stays wet
and the whiskey stays sour.