Midsummer, heat lingers like flannel in the dusk,
beading Martini glasses with sweat. We touch
our drinks together, lightly, so they clink
like strangers at an airport grazing suitcases.

We forget the gas grill preheating on the porch,
new potatoes and green beans on the stove;
all we know is desire, all we feel is the warmth
waiting in the other's grasp. There is no tomorrow,

just now. Upstairs, like passengers, we don't look
down on what we left below, coals glowing within the dark
like distant cities; nor to what awaits us--missed
connections, ruined dinners. No, instead we fly

into a banquet of flesh, blackening our bodies
on the grills of each other's bones, like Cajun fillets
cooked fast on high heat, but eaten slow.

From The Music of Exile (Cloverdale Books, 1994) and Poem No. 74.