When I showed her my poetry for the first time
she said I was just like Conor Oberst and my eyes
went big like the Midwest. She was from Canada.
This one night I watched her pet tarantula crawl across
the bed and into her open hand. She held it up to the light
and it glowed like a hairy candle.
That same night her roommate recorded a 42-minute song
about the revolution that was sure to happen.
After he finished the last strum, his bedroom door
fell off the hinge and he ran out naked onto the porch
into the funeral parlors of the open sky.
We followed the chaos.
Next door the squatters from Hartford were busy
disemboweling dirty old mirrors
in search of the American Dream.
We got high with them.
I held Spider-Girl close I think
and whispered sweet nothings about how I would carry
her underwear into the sea and wrap it around
the slimy throat of the largest starfish I could find.
When the sickle cell sun started to rise
we made blood oaths about how we’ll always be wild horses
in rush hour traffic, that in twenty years we’ll meet
under the tyrannosaurus nymph trees of nylon
and brag about all the beautiful damage we’ve caused.
I think I’ll keep waiting.