Cicadas sizzled the summer heat
while we stayed inside
catching kisses blown by the AC
in a log cabin overlooking a lake

The air smelled of freshly squeezed cubes
stacked like Himalayas from an ice
machine on the fourth floor of Luxor
littered with ads of women
selling sex at wholesale

Panoramic window, as if hung from the wall,
displayed portraits of cedars burning
green like Emerald City or bucketful
of toy soldiers and the sky
spackled with cotton clouds

spilling over like garbage on Thursday mornings.

We drove to your childhood town. We drove fast, probably broke some laws on the way. You took the exit on Atlantic then turned left. I saw the city streets dancing with Chinese letters reflecting their brush stroke paradise against the red Motel signs. They were glowing like fire flies in the summer of your senior year. “Behind this fence are patches of dead grass and empty bleachers with broken lights.” You told me as we drove down the desolate street planted with slumbering houses. “That’s the football field I graduated from.” We listened to our breath splatter against the air and extend white webs of condensation across the early November dawn.

Of the birth of our Lord
and his virgin mother you kept mum
while the scholars argued
that perhaps the scripture was not literal
but rather a symbol
an embellishment much like fishermen
gathered around the fire stove;
ale in hand and stroking their beards
with the other, shaking off ashes caught
between twines in various degrees
of gray, recollecting the fins and silver
gills, the mammoth cry of the hook that peered
through its lip as ripples grew
farther and farther away from the epicenter.

the newspaper explained it this way
that the driver was not drunk
he did not have any passengers
he drove a blue oldsmobile alero
which from the license plate
they were able to figure out
that the car belonged
apparently to his step father
but it had not yet been reported stolen
at first he was spotted by an officer
who observed that he was swerving,
following the yellow dotted lines
that separated the two lanes
of a one way street like the steps
from an old dance book
with the illustration of a man holding his partner
dipping her deep to the ground
and her hair sweeping the floor
like the final stroke of a japanese calligraphy
that symbolized everlasting peace.