listening to the jazz of ice, the slow blues

of a just-lit cigarette? Some low voice

is crooning your name, and in the double

being poured behind the bar

the tenor sax is starting its solo, taking you

out over the changes, sounding

just like love, just like it won’t ever stop.

Bad Girl

BAD GIRL

She’s the one sleeping all day, in a room

at the back of your brain. She wakes up

at the sound of a cork twisted free

of a bottle, a stabbed olive

plopped into gin. She’s prettier than you

and right now you bore the shit out of her,

sitting there sipping when she wants

to stand on the rim of the glass, naked,

dive straight to the bottom and lie there

looking up, amazed at how the world

wavers and then comes clear. You’re not

going to let her. You’ve locked her in

with her perfume and cheap novels,

her deep need for trouble. She’s the one

calling to you through the keyhole,

then sneaking away to squirm out

a window and tear her silk dress.

You can’t guess where she’s going,

or who you’ll wake up with

when you finally wake up,

your head throbbing like a heart.

She’s the one you’re scared of,

the one who dares you to go ahead

and completely disappear. It’s not

you the boys are noticing, not you

turning toward them and throwing off light.

You’re crouched in a corner, coming undone.

She’s in love with you now. She’s the one.

’Round Midnight

’ROUND MIDNIGHT

In the book I’m reading: hard rain,

spike heels on pavement,

a man waiting in a rented room

to draw a woman down onto his bed.

She’s the wrong woman,

she’s a car wreck in a silk dress

and he can’t wait to touch her.

No plot without desire,

the more desperate the better.

I look up to find that here, too,

it’s raining. And now that I’m back

in my own quiet life

I feel like a character who’s barely

been imagined yet, just a name

wearing a faded T-shirt,

reaching for her glass of cold wine.

If only the river would surge into the streets,

if only a tree would uproot itself

or the roof fly off in a funnel of black wind.

Such is my life: A minute ago I was happy,

immersed in a book. Now I feel a misery

only violence could cure. Now

I have to invent a story

to drag me out into the city,

toward music and grainy light

and the wrong men, I have to discover

what it is I want

and who I’m going to have to hurt to get it.

South of the Border

SOUTH OF THE BORDER

Here by the pool in Rosarito

we are playing Lotería

with handfuls of pale, freckled beans,