Somewhere between Saint Joseph and Chalmers

(for David)

The things we want have already been secured—
their celebrations dripped throughout summers
before even our births.

And though they wait to be secured again:

we shouldn't worry.

It is the shared wanting between us—
the action and
not the object—that pulses
and matters.

Our want wells us both
with the same fluid
that
neither can see
but hear only in the voice—
trembling.

And if we've forgotten as much as we've learned

about the hot deck waiting
for you and me
to sit at the day's end
of your teenage job

or the contained infinity of college-town
night

or our sacred dogs'
respective whimpers

or our wicked cycles of this fucking country
endless and fevered

—if we've forgotten as much as we've learned

then I wish to learn and then forget and then
learn and forget some more
over and over
and over
in our shared wanting

forever.

*

I wait for you
at a Leo's Coney Island immune to age—

at the imagined nexus
where Telegraph and Woodward
will never meet.

We are 19 and sunburned to our
half-Mediterranean bronzed pinkishness.

In a certain booth
where the napkin dispenser
is inexhaustible

and, like a tide, the waitress
is never not approaching
with a circular grace—

there, we will be this way

forever.