Hedonistic Transcendentalism
Between the wind, you know, doing what it does,
and a nice slice of deli pizza,
I lean towards breezes,
because a good breeze beats most things: as in, say,
a shoulder massage from a dude or
a sober one-night stand. Even better, a bike breeze
beats a passing pretty face, beats a look of admiration
from an uncle, beats someone else’s baby laughing.
And I’ll take a breeze beside a pond over ice cream,
over having a heartier handshake than a cop,
even over catching a friendly smile,
from a belle in a yellow summer skirt.
Now, that same summer skirt pressed gently
by a breeze against an inner thigh,
at a small town festival,
beats almost everything, even,
say, seeing, I don’t know, a jackrabbit
in a wash–
but not a coyote burrowing in snow.
Man, what I’d give to glimpse a coyote
burrowing in snow.
Between the wind, you know, doing what it does,
and a nice slice of deli pizza,
I lean towards breezes,
because a good breeze beats most things: as in, say,
a shoulder massage from a dude or
a sober one-night stand. Even better, a bike breeze
beats a passing pretty face, beats a look of admiration
from an uncle, beats someone else’s baby laughing.
And I’ll take a breeze beside a pond over ice cream,
over having a heartier handshake than a cop,
even over catching a friendly smile,
from a belle in a yellow summer skirt.
Now, that same summer skirt pressed gently
by a breeze against an inner thigh,
at a small town festival,
beats almost everything, even,
say, seeing, I don’t know, a jackrabbit
in a wash–
but not a coyote burrowing in snow.
Man, what I’d give to glimpse a coyote
burrowing in snow.
Inside Montezuma’s Well
Let me offer you
an earphone, and you will
say play “Into the Mystic,”
cigarette smoke
accompanying your words
like subtitles for the deaf fog,
the silent fog that pours
like thick milk, up
through the Anasazi alcoves
dug into the well’s walls,
slips over the rim, and down
into the forest’s bed.
Let us loiter the morning
away in one of the Earth’s
many lungs; conjoined
by my headset, we’ll share
a serape, and you will be
the fog in my arms,
the thing in me
that pours over,
and we will drink the water.
Mark Petrie lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he is finishing his MA in English at the University of New Orleans. His work has appeared in Booth & mojo.