Orbit

How do we know Mars isn't just a sea of blood?We haven't fucked in three weeks. He always drives.A podcast murmurs the low register of factsas we cross the bay, town of blazing neon in impossible pinks,and he points out a strip club with a dirt floor. Bare Assets.The billboard Wife Insurance twirls above diamond earrings,binary stars on the cusp of collision.The sign at Silks reads Golfers get in free.I hear Mars and our blood are red for the same reasonas we pass 2001: A Sex Odyssey.That club looks like a spaceship from bad '60s sci-fi,a warped gray egg belted by portholes,which I'm sure are blacked out,because the acrobats undress in windowless rooms.They dance, weightless, in a radioactive no man's land,and I admire them the way I admire astronauts,and anyone who is willing to put their body on the line,and when our hands touch,it feels like one of usis wearing a cold glove.A voice from elsewhere speaks:To orbit something is to fall towards it continuously.