elegy for my first love 1987

Debra Roberts This is full pulsing with every breath in reading it, with every heartbeat on each syllable.

1

How do you actually die?
Detach yourself from your body and vanish?
Unresponsive with a waxed smile in a wood chip coffin

She was smiling; everybody said she was dying but we spoke
about the graduation, the derby and airplane flying when we grow up

She smelt of piss and detergent, body looked bumpy and potholed
Her nightgown flooded like a curtain in the elbows of the wind
The anatomy already suggested a presto I am gone trick.

I kept with the eyes, yes I just kept to the shiny eyes that was the last
of our special memory

“You still want to f**k me one day Tommie” she said, suddenly crying

2

It was a throbbing afternoon in the railway yard
Heat burning down between us, the sun inside us
her moist, warm hands behind the train coaches
her sweaty fingers on my living, yearning thrust

“Hey! what are you doing there” the signal man shouted
Pants and panties were left on the rail

running into the field we laughed and it felt forever
we kissed foolishly and we did not know that darkness
sits like lice on light
that our years runs out of town like a dark horse
ripping us away from our desires