BRANDEN BOYNTON

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Dictionary Hill

When I read Joey Comeau books
I picture every woman
as you.

Same moss green eyes –
deep set in large hollows.
Same squared off nose.
Same recklessly swelling hips.

And I want our life
to be his characters’ lives.

All full of loud and moving things.
Jet engines and razor blades.
Garter belts.
Sand storms and avalanches.
Blood stains.

I want our life to be a hidden tunnel
locked behind the fireplace,
dark and musty
and overloaded with promise.

I want our life
to be sitting on a skateboard,
straddling each other
down the steepest hill in the neighborhood –
no pads
and the wind kissing your temples
through close cut hair.

And I want it so bad
that I can feel it pulsing
like a lighthouse
in the back of my knees.

Reminding me,
we don’t have a life –
just lives.
Yours constantly shifting,
and mine
sounding a horn to sea.

The Universe

“It whirls, it whirls.”
– Alexander Calder

We laid ourselves out in a Kansas field,
counting the blinking lights
of passing airliners,
searching for the steady slide
of satellites circling the sky –
the two of us alone
in the unbroken summer night.

The last thing I should have done
was stand up, walk to the car,
put the key
in the ignition.

I read once
that though the universe is real,
it must be imagined
to be reproduced.

I think of you now
as you must be –
flooded in sunlight on a front porch,
iced tea in hand and the horizon
closing its orbit around you

– but picture you then,
illuminated by starlight,
dancing to Creedence Clearwater
playing on my car radio,
skirt spreading forth like Saturn’s rings,
spinning like a compass in the arctic,
spinning like a Bon Jovi vinyl,
needle hugging the grooves.