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We've driven beyond the night
with its burning headdress
of pulleys and frayed rope,
beyond the smell of shale
and saddle oil,
beyond the sandstone dreaming
its cadmium dream
and the broken teeth
and false friends
penciling themselves into my days,
the humming cables
and diesel fumes,
the light from a thigh-high stocking
filled with unmatched spoons,
and the slate-dark hem
of the county line.
We've driven beyond
last summer's dead crows wired
by their feet to these fence posts,
beyond the sheet ice
with its death-tongue crawling up
from the jeweled throat
of the river.
We've driven beyond the night
into the new year,
and I've thrown your leg across me
and you're giving me
the torque and tremor
of your animal waist
and I'm wearing your pinion hips
like a crown of kerosene
and I'm grabbing your hair
like a fistful of raffle tickets
and you're exploding over me
like river rocks
in the horizon's mouth
and your body glows
like an open boxcar
punched through
with light the color
of the high-water mark
stained across the moon.

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Copyright © 2018 Michael McGriff All rights reserved
from Early Hour
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission