The Mason-Dixie line measures my waist.
The inches add on—it’s the baby of defeat.
Because sometime in my little death,
I surrendered to your breath.
Your mouth to mouth spelled out anonymity
from the crowd
and I welcomed the isolation,
because all the loving arms were taken.

The vessels in my eyes have ruptured.
Must have happened long ago,
before I realized you’re voice was fading out,
and that you’d learned too much from Jack the Ripper
after all.
I knew the music was sharp from my own lips—
discordant, wandering, crowing in fits,
yet I did not hear your baritone’s harmony,
coaxing along my cacophony,
but it’s coming,
coming along to radio.

The muffler is old. The car sputters,
it grits its teeth.
The ancient silver body groans
like an animal in heat as I turn the
broken AC
under the stoplight.

I cannot stop adopting these opinions
that aren’t my own. Get lost on the way home,
under the downpour of broken banjos and Hollywood sorrow.
That’s how it is in the South.
It’s all “Miss” or “Ma’m,”
“Can I help you with that?”
“Could I hold your hand?”
But there’s the peach-sweet syrup of your lies,
holding my head under the sugar and goodbyes,
and as I scream with a broken arm,
no one’s calling 911.

My eyes sting from trying to scrape the mascara off
the last lash, second to the right—
stage makeup; face paint.
I squint into the light, bloodshot.
My dreams shot to hell from tonight.

I find my way to the movie-complex,
watch the cinematic miracle, the contrived lovers’ dispute.
And as I see the celluloid fades to a blank screen,
I think of your grave.
I think that I should cry or scream but I don’t want to be rude
to the other movie goers,
so I fall into my own rabbit-hole
and pretend you’ve been faithful all this time.
And I am the new kid again.
And you are my first and only friend.

So let’s play cowboys and Indians
with our hearts and our veins,
letting the deep blood red earth
gamble for the biggest horse and loudest howl.
But as an arrow strikes through the heart
and shatters right on the mark, I know I’m not as young as I used to be,
and that I keep dangerous company.
My hands sway, the white flag of my flesh,
if you’ll just take me now.
They’ll ask me, “Did he love you?”
“And How?”
But all I can do now
is enjoy the silence of another Georgia night.

For the creak and chirp of the baby cicadas
is my violin prodigy,
in the heat,
reaching the peak of melody
like the orgasm—rarely.
I t is a small feat
and small pleasure
but there is nothing better
than the rocking of my body outside
as if I were buffeted on the sea
of ecstasy.
Because when I go in,
the questions set in.
I see his picture on the nightstand
and your shadow stretching tall.
Who are you?  for He came first.
Are you following Jack’s footsteps down the murderous hall?
The echo of the shoes is a heartbeat,
a heart sealed up tight in the thick plaster wall.

Now I reserved this table, how long must I wait?
Reserved my bed to lie in, I reserved my grave.
The light is low, the food is cold
and the doors swing like in a saloon.
One hand gripped on the mace
as I leave for the dark place.

I sit perched on the horizon,
the edge of one loss to another—
given up my love, all my bottled water.
The buildings carry their own babies in the muddy puddles,
against the wind they huddle,
but their semi-circle somehow is just one great smile.

I hear the beep beep of the LCD of my dreams.
It is a song, a tune.
The ER of my cavity is long, and holds this sonata.
I know:
you can give a lung,
because you have two.
But what do you do when I need more?
I can’t breathe…

“I’m sorry—
it was premature.”
My words caught in your vile mouth to mouth.
Tell the other woman hello for me,
when you see her.