The party is winding down.
A few guests remain, talking
or having a smoke by
the back windows. It has begun
to rain, a low gray drizzle. Inside,
the glasses are spotted with
fingerprints. The fan
trails blue streamers, nods
in its plastic cage. Half-
eaten crudités wilt between
crumpled napkins.
The latecomers enter through
the open door, wander quite
unnoticed to the bar, where
they help themselves to a couple of
drinks and maybe the last
of the cashews. They talk
in hushed tones about
the latest suicide, the silt
in the drinking water, the dogs
twitching in their sleep.
Drinks in hand, they walk
past the knot of smokers,
out onto …

I.
Minute horror of scorpion
scuttled over clipped grass,
your forked tail flicking
out dew behind you,
staggering over pillows’
white dunes, not fearing
the slow-to-waken
for you have whispered
subtle morse in our ears,
slipped like a comma
from the soft conch,
for you have translated
the sea before dawn,
then weaved to the ground
we cross over, reassured.
II.
Or perhaps a semi-colon—
contingently, you
on the pillow, in the silk
flotsam, those
threads, my lover’s hair,
running-on past fingers,
past pincers in the umber path
to her scalp.
You are a do-without;
you are easily forgotten.
III.
Except the initial revulsion
for even what makes you lovely:
flexion of lacquered torso,
clean eyelet of caliper legs.
Awfully agile, you …

last night when you left me
for a minute to go and talk
to your friends who don’t know
my name, I gave up on you
and I fucked this girl at random
by just thinking of her as she
danced with one hand at the nape
of her neck, with dark hair
and Persian eyes—saying ma’shAllah,
bold and backed under a light
that made her real, and physical,
and there for me, dancing like
she knew I was watching her,
like she was ready for me to
take her hand and place it
at my back, as I walked away
with her, as I pretended …