On Sunday
by David Waite
white moth pressing
against a nylon screen
on the back door as I lay sideways on the couch, one eye
above the other watching
the fog on a glass of rum and coke:
in the yard this morning, beer bottles
we left as husks by the fire
were shining in their dark gold
when I placed them down in the paper sack.
they slept till late, the coffee smell
grew in a thin light, they drank it slow
with their mouths held soft and mumbling,
we pulled out the R&B,
quick steps of the Supremes
and someone played a Bar-kays record.
we drove out for barbeque
after one and the pale sting
that we all felt sat upon our eyes,
five people at the booth,
two of whom I knew,
one girl talked with
a faint lisp on her tongue,
she spoke too forward in the mouth:
still August and I’m waiting
for September to see
if S. will still remember,
last time a close
inch of thigh beside me,
her legs lit in amber from the sun.
and the meat cooked in wood smoke,
the sauce with drop molasses
and it hummed up quiet in the mouth,
silence at the table, murmur set behind us,
the slick meat rolling on our tongues,
we walked out to separate cars,
drove home down the highway
empty now in the pale heat
that rolled through the open window.
at home the house quiet, air still thick
into evening and the clouds
start to roll another storm,
wind churning, white ball static
curling through the TV tubes.
in the heat, J. used to
crack ice between her teeth,
thin hair and face, for my birthday
in high school we’d eat German
where she’d drink black tea
so slowly but we can’t be friends
alone at night, a flash of rain
washed the ground for a moment
then died, thin sun peeling off
one sheet of clouds at sundown.
and I lay an hour in the shaded
light from the storm,
the yard down below bit with grape
and tough, small sumac, a barn they’d torn down
then poured with dirt was peaking
out in pieces from the hill,
walked out back to see the new
arch of trees above the trail
with water falling from the vines;
at last business, S. was saying
that maybe she’d be quitting, bad shift
of friction she’d been feeling
but none with me, the things I told,
and we’re just one year apart,
a cotton heart that I was wanting,
the give that formed, five minutes talking
& three months to pull to mind, I sat watching
the night run to darkness, by now the fog
dropped from the glass down to the wood,
the night thick with clouds as they burned out the moon.
Bio: David Waite is a writing professor in the Syracuse, NY, area. He is also the Contributing Editor for the journal, Poet's Ink Review. He was nominated last year for the Pushcart Prize by this editor.
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