Desert Roads

    I could do that too,
     I could be gorgeous and cruel.
                           Susan Mitchell


In the car headed to Phoenix
I tell you that it’s one minute before
midnight, you’re still the princess,
anything is possible.
I want our lips to wrestle, but your
tongue is busy with salt tablets,
on the phone cursing your lesbian lover,
weaving across the half-eaten yellow lines,
the seatbelt trying to strangle me.
You laugh, shouting to your breasts,
settle down fellas, guided by the spirits
driving even faster to make me feel
like public enemy number one.
Perhaps another time you would
of pulled off the road, I would of said
something like, the world is a white dress,
an enormous stage, the two of us naked
as rain. This time we would disappear into
a small town, the low-beams of passing cars
tickling the deadbolt on the door.
You scream, slow it down, so the two
us wait for a summer storm, for a fistfight
between ex-lovers, for your black
hair to turn sidewalk gray.