Stevedore Swift @StevedoreSwift

The morning the cardinal started striking His reflection like a match Against the windows We had walked from the pool Through the fields behind Your apartments Shoulders peeling, lips like Fanta grape Kicking anthills and Climbing the stairs, Burping Dr. Pepper #NPRPoetry

When we left the clinic With a gauze dried red Like a rose We used a payphone to call a friend To drive us home I had a sobbing in my chest, Stone heavy that didn't make a sound #NPRPoetry

You fell asleep against me on the couch Listening to the June bugs thumping the screen The bottoms of your feet were black from being Barefoot and I could feel the rise of your side Becoming in time with mine As we took the room and spun it with our breath #NPRPoetry

Summer skinned, bruised & bleeding Wetting spear grass with our mouths Mown grass and mosquito crowned Because together we were kings Kings of summer Days stretched into each other Thick blankets of fields stitched With mesquite And hours slowed to a Heartbeat #NPRpoetry

We were sunburned Smelling like chlorine Thin, freckled, and bleached Seeing halos around the streetlights And the trees were singing with cicadas A mockingbird rang in the stairwell Like a chord in a soundboard And I kissed you on the stairs to your apartment #NPRpoetry

The grasshoppers Called atop their grass steeples To the roofers As they mopped tar and Cut strips of flashing To get born again The honeysuckle fields Moved softly With the wind Like a woman Letting her hair down At the foot of your bed #NPRpoetry

As the cottonwood snowing over the lawn Sung a hymn to the water striders Making rings on the pond We nailed rungs of ladders Up trees Like the teeth of zippers Hanging our shirts in the branches Like sails And we could go anywhere In the world #NPRpoetry

Biking to the rec-pool through the neighbor's yards flattening bills for the vending machine And hammering nickels to the size of quarters To play Joust and Eight Ball Deluxe at 7 Eleven July exhaled us into August And still breaths through me #NPRpoetry

How I loved my body next to you Held like a heartbeat strung like a sentence Counting afternoons In cigarettes burns on the windowsill How I loved my body next to you Pinned under the ceiling fan Flung on the bed Like we were clothes Just pulled from the dryer #NPRpoetry

Curled like leaves Raked behind the chain links Where the sun glowed In spider webs Jittering a pulse As if they were Speaking We wandered fields of parking meters To the edge of the circle drives Pooling against the glass buildings Lit like a prairie-fire #NPRpoetry

You're like Easter morning In bells singing psalms Through the puppy breath of spring That's all sweet milkfat and sap Panting down the street Through ribbons of bird song Under the wax sheen of magnolias Up against the fresh linen of the sky #NPRpoetry

Holding Black Cats As if they were serpents Like the Pharaoh's magicians Conjured before Moses We danced like Pentecostals Dropping as they exploded Burning the dirt Just past the cattle guard Black as ashes Rubbed on our foreheads At Lent #NPRpoetry

My lullaby My firefly Opening flowers In hours turned like pages My lullaby My bluest sky Sunshine spread Like a banquette My lullaby My ice-cream pie Light pulled from the morning Into the sheets Laying in each other’s arms Then moving apart to sleep #NPRpoetry