Bad Love Affair
Rent from DeepDyve- Bad Love Affair
You walk the night backcircling the park, pollenstuck to your eyebrows and hair—oak pollen, jasmine,clouds of green rustshedding onto your sleeves.
You are like a man in a film noirwho knows the most important thingis to keep moving and stayout of sight. Each step you takewith your collar turned upthe night grows larger inside you,stars the sparks from a lit cigarettethrown down onto Dolores Street,empty Corona bottles, wispsof blond hair left behind on your pillow.
How long will you be so bereft?Alone after hours in the dark cantinawatching clips of the great eighties’ middleweights:Hagler and Leonard, Roberto Duranor Thomas Hearns from Detroitwho would smile in the ringlike he had a secretevery time he was hurt. [End Page 110]
Joseph Millar’s most recent collection is Blue Rust, from Carnegie Mellon. His work has won fellowships from the nea and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches in Pacific University’s low-residency mfa.
