on a golden chain
on your neck.
That night we hold hands in church
with shock and pleasure
as good as wild monkey sex
and I ask you to skip
the Hawaiian Luau Youth Party
and we watch our daughter’s first soccer game,
and she’s not that good,
and our son wins a junior varsity tennis championship
in at our old high school,
and you buy tickets to Wicked on Broadway
for your trip to New York
with our daughter
and realize the tickets are for the wrong night
and you buy more, with my blessing,
even though we’re near bankruptcy,
and I, prematurely old,
help our daughter
move back in our house,
our son breaks his engagement,
the dog poops in the hall,
and the clothes washer leaks
as I try to pay back taxes
when my broken front tooth
makes me look inbred,
an idiotic murderer,
and you get your hair done
with my last hundred
and call me from the salon
the snow melt leaks into the car.
Only now,
only now, now now
you realize the contradiction
between evolution,
dinosaurs and Noah’s ark.
I question what happens to the star.
I marvel why holding hands
feels like bewildered apes
that face extinction in the Congo
instead of wild monkey sex.
