The Impossibility of Love Affairs in Book Stores

In this year of self-help, I sculpt circles in familiar blood —

a jagged scrawl as though a limping drawl,
or accent from an ancient country
has invaded the spirit of my left brain

and you congeal — dance movement
as indefinable as the identity of common clouds.

In the year of the pronoun, we have become
a trade book store on a French Quarter Rue —
somewhere near Jackson Square

where we genuflect to the smug dictators of superfluous words.

There is a prayer for poems and for coffee grounds —
for Hurricanes and for Mint Julep. There is a prayer
for the silence of street cars and begnets.

No prayers exist in the space between our first sip and our final words.