Collerbones, Splintered

He’s a ragtag kind of slob
pulls his look together with a pawn shop fedora,
cheap beer in hand.
They call him Boston, but he’s from Sacramento,
suburb outskirts where
he smokes on the fire escape
on Smog Alert days.

I ask what he’s all about.
He grunts, slides me a shot, half slopping
out of the glass. Then a second,
a fourth. Half of one.
He’s run out.
Anti-Galileo,
Speaking of stars and their arrangements
as bullshit.

He’s a Libra
(for the record).

I tell him of being wrapped in chords
sung by choirs, sounds so divine,
and he scoffs.
“That’s not beauty,
that’s pageantry.”
We part as strangers on the subject.

I detest his snarky, roguish smirk -
how dirty it makes my skin.
He flicks me a ciggie, lights his own.
“I don’t smoke.”
Yet, it’s delicious. Savory
to feel so tainted.

My devil delights, smoldering
on my shoulder.

He dubs me ‘Memphis.’
“Why?” The train gust knocks
his hat to the slushy tiles.
“Criminals belong there. Like us.”
“I’m not a criminal.”
He disagrees,
“You are now.”

And maybe there’s no danger in
hitchhiking to Arizona,
in practicing everything I don’t believe.
I’m acquainted with these boots now,
prone to their unorthodox step.

Alone with a city I know
nothing about.