I bought him a late
dinner so he’d gravitate
me, walk me
home over the dunes.
The sight under flood
lights of punched
out cars tossed
lightly on a junk
heap excited
me, the heavy metal version
of lost youth, a vigilante
worrier at peak night.
Our feet sank in cold wheat.
The moon was part
melatonin, part sheep,
mirror image
of the beach: cassette
tinsel, caution
tape, typewriter
ribbons of dulse—
I felt acoustic in relation to my own feet.
A gull became a dagger,
a shrewd beggar
shaking sand
from cans and
things were now,
finally, what they seemed.
My fragile hair
smelled like TV rain, while
in person, the moon
smudged off
like grave
rubbings on our hands.
Kirstin Allio is the author of the novels Garner (Coffee House Press) and Buddhism for Western Children (University of Iowa Press), and the short story collection Clothed, Female Figure (Dzanc). Poems are most recently out or forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Bat City Review, Bennington Review, Fence, Guesthouse, Poetry Northwest, North American Review, and Subtropics; she’s closing in on a collection. She lives in Providence, RI. www.kirstinallio.com
