Where a Bygone Boss Sat

Hold her roped in rapture exposed from
the bedroom window the watcher sweetly
speaks soft science fictions into the Mars
canals of her earscape glowing sunset red
translucent wet saliva and dry spit

show her private photos of secret
mountain waters surrounding her in a
wooded shadow, kneel in the clearing
blood in the pine moss carpet and coiled fern
she knows full well w. full body what
the shadows see

following her filthy fingerprints
clambering abandoned train trestles
ogling magazines of uncouth cowboys on
sorrel stallions, wilding women w. long
laser guns laced to their latex legs

bury her face in the new smell of a used book
morning's warm coffee an aromatic aphrodisiac
late-night's strip tease tipsy in the porch light
wraith in bare feet begging with a crooked smile

she sits where a bygone boss sat, and in his years
absence her naked ass on his naked desk
dust as heavy as the paperweights used to be
when the last men left this building shuddered

she is ready when she is wet, calling you to
come inside
frame her in summer thunder
disguised as that torrent of falling rain.

TA