Something Solid: The Nineties: Silly Putty

The brave-hearted poetics of sex—
possessed, possessive of impulses
to fling one’s self into another,
then fling one’s self into a world
in which things turn into, become,
other things— the first thing I
think of is State College, the dim
recollection of screwing Jennifer
on the Old Main lawn, dusk of
a long day in May— where I was
was where I wasn’t, as Jennifer
also was, wasn’t, chiaroscuro comes
into us in the idea of durations— I
had no idea, in sex & metaphor, what could die.

Just for the insanity of her, & why,
Jen remains a surprise, & the wildest of my wives.
A self-possessed, pixilated individual,
stacked like a Playboy bunny, mad as a hatter,
refashioning class like it was silly putty,
we bonded at the crotch like two young bunnies,
just for her to be a mother, just to make silken-soft
the bitterness of a broken life in the sticks—
the stigma of trailer-trash insignias, which here
camouflaged as lower-middle before my naïve eyes.
The pill she was purportedly on was more
camouflage— I forgive her now because she
had no choice, backed under trailer wheels.
Corn-rows fell on her, & dirty deals.