Michigan

Out on the lake,
we’ll meet again: An anchored pontoon bobbing
up and down like our newfound bed
and the Woodbridge moonlight as it spreads
in the Junetime, lush and throbbing.
Come let me take
my car down 94 and I’ll be sober—
the interstate: A lullaby
that puts a worry in your eye
when the summertime is over
out on the lake.

The current swept;
and we both stepped
out into the cottonwood forest
as Autumn crept,
the rainclouds wept,
like a homesick lakeshore tourist.
Nature highway, widened breadths,
as the maple leaves crumble and fall to their deaths.

A muffled phone call from a truck stop stall
telling you when I’m arriving—
your Wisconsin red is blinding.
A now-empty loft; a final Dee-troit cough
and no more waters left dividing:
My Michigan blue ain’t binding.
A bout of hay fever at a broken parking meter:
My mother knows that I’m in hiding—
your Wisconsin red is blinding.
No more denials of our Midwestern smiles
in a lakehouse made from split-log siding:
My Michigan blue ain’t binding.
Your Wisconsin red is blinding.
My Michigan blue ain’t binding.
Your Wisconsin red is blinding
out on the lake.

Superior

Early-morning tenderness;
you lay out your dress and press
your fingers up against the shower wall.
Coffee when the sun comes up—
you yawn and moan over your cup—
we wish it true, but time won’t stall.
Nighttimes spent with wine and spring;
the distant twang of banjo strings;
a thousand ways for us to be sublime.
Temperance in a lakeshore town:
For you, I’ll turn the grayness down
and plant myself among the whitest pines.

The cold air on our naked skin
makes the grave that we begin
to dig ourselves when we refuse to hide.
We reminisce and we relate
to the waving of the great
white north where frigid water keeps our time.
Your tired limbs, my tired mind—
you healed the sick; I made them mine—
Somehow, now, I fell off from their terror.
I trade the gray for white and green;
for something that you think pristine—
The asphalt brokenhearted bad news bearer.

Autumn’s gone; the winter’s set;
we live a Marquette temperament:
Born and raised upon the Detroit skyline.
A morning where we make amends
with humid breath and backwards bends;
we rise above the great above and sunrise.
I’m crazy but I can’t complain
‘cause now I live a wayward haze;
a silver-lining fantasy in snowbanks.
I’m wide-eyed, but I’m back-and-forth
between the grayness and the North—
I’m burned alive inside your mother’s gas tank.