You Polyurethane Smile You

The drought was over; rain poured its velveteen sheets
past her window, and clouds hid lush, green mountains from view.
Cars sizzled below, staticky, like a dead television screen,
while naked I crouched at the sill, looking out, hearing behind me
her bare feet rasp across even more barren tatami.

It’d been too long. We drank water to refresh,
kissed furtively to remind. The awkwardness of confused feelings
and the unwillingness to reach beyond ourselves
drunkened me, making light my steps towards home.
Headphones pierced the gauze of reverie: “Just the
gentle art of making enemies.” Smile, bow, smile again

At the elderly Nipponese startling up at me,
too surprised for a moment
to look away. But I

didn’t mind. I was feeling good beneath my umbrella of
habit, remembering how, like a nun robed I’d prayed
between those long, luscious legs
pointing neither towards heaven nor hell.

On the other side of the world,
something like disappointment fell from the sky, but the memory
of her orgasm--pure, angelic--called me, hailed me,
as I sleepwalked across concrete dune seas.
Oh, that rain and that polyurethane smile,
sheathed me, made me…perhaps even kept me…safe.

In that gray palace of destruction, the sun has long since risen,
and I would birth no children—not yet, you see:
the label on her condoms could've read: “Made in Japan was I.”