Even knowing all the trouble with lassos
by Randy Markel James
how I long for a slow dance
to country k.d. lang
how I want the lights to cool for us
dry as a bone under tin roof patter
I need arms to comfort these skeletons
Spirits can only run so far before they tire
And here I am afraid to close my eyes –
there remains so much to imbibe –
of the story I’ve written,
the one that’s brought me to a checker-floored
dive, where a slow dance with a sympathetic
stranger might grant a reprieve the length
of our embrace
Timid lips flower into careless
breath, plaintive tongues eagerly
lock as hands find knowing, broad
shoulders and fingers slide inside
strange loops – tug at the tattered seams
We grow behind our button flies
pull tight as k.d. swoons to an absent
sweetheart, “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes”
Lap steel phrases lend our swing tipsy,
and tipsier we are by the record
fade having found each other with a sliver
between our pearl buttons, unsure
of our open doors, what to make
of foreign bones
Randy Markel James is an educator, editor, teacher and performer from Los Angeles, California. Some of his work has been published in Palette, & Change, The Rumpus, Denver Quarterly, and Essential Truths: The Bay Area in Color. James has performed in venues across Los Angeles and The San Francisco Bay Area. His chapbook, Shifters, is currently available on Nomadic Press.