hands like thick pads
polishing the half-globe
from white fringed brow
to nape
those
are the men I love
who move gentle
slowly folding knees
offering homage
to the fine silk of ears
loving
the large nature
the teeth
that slumber behind slack lips.

He is leaving for Tulsa of San Ildefonso Pueblo
In less than fifteen minutes, this kid who wedges himself,
Sullen, between the stuccoed blue wall and a three-legged table
Sweating beneath his glass. We are the one, the ones
Coming between him and the girl behind the bar. Or,
Maybe he is waiting to take her home. Maybe he is
Dreaming of taking her to the dark back room
Among bags of beans and jugs of two percent milk
Shivering on chrome refrigerator racks;
Either way he can only watch as her quick wrists
Cradle white ceramic plates of lemon pie.
Her back is to him, spine budding a path
Beneath a sweater the color of cantaloupes.
She bends for a clean knife and he hates us.

Boys with freshly scraped necks form fists and we all worship
in slow reptilian shock the ticking of celluloid looping through reels

with blooming bubbles of bombs and ash fallout. Emery Beecraft
with his bowl cut riding like a helmet curls fetal next to the deadly windows.

Someone moves a toe marginally out into the aisle testing the air for radiation
waiting for Mrs. Landon’s voice to save us, send us out into a day made new,

color bleeding back across tree bones, the cinder grass. We watch
in the darkened room. We become familiar with the sound of the world ending,

with what smells are basic to last days--Tide-scented jeans, mown grass
clinging like salt to the bottom of Keds, the Bazooka gum Kelly tucks

with an easy tongue between gum and molar. Hands clasp over the neck
to protect the fracturable spine, conjuring shells, mesmerized by the way

plates form a pattern, patterns form across the backs of our eyelids
everything sparking red and gleaming horn. In our crouch, in our incomprehension

we wait for the bell to release us, wait for the dreaming of turtles softening
into slide and stroke by the clean sun, the carotid artery beating tetherball tetherballl

the next day remembering only vaguely the thrill, the slow boil of dust cloud,
bowing before some mighty thing, and the way we all blew over like wheat in the wind.