Tupelo

I wanna go to Tupelo with you.

I don’t care that I’ve never seen that place outside of a picture,

because I think that town would hold us

keeping us cool, keeping our skin warm because we’re tasty.

I want to sleep in a hotel room where everything is velvet and green.

Where the end of the toilet paper roll

is dog-eared like a Jacqueline Susann novel.

I want to make verbs with you.

I want my thighs to stick to the seat.

want to shave my legs in a parking lot

with a razor from a pack of six.

The pack has to last us three weeks.

I want to eat warmish macaroni at an Esso station

in a town between others with names.

I want to sing until my voice sounds like yours

and yours like mine. I want to almost leave you one night

in a dead mall over something tiny that explodes.

I want to love Elvis with you without irony.

I want to take care of all that business I built up without you

on my own. I want to cry lost time into every stitch

of the pillow until all those stitches loosen into notes.

I want to take a bath of notes. I want to loofah my legs with B-flats

and slide As down my stomach to a place

that in teen movies is secret and sacred.

But I want you to know me entirely. I want you to record music on my skin.

I want to play your eyelashes, your toes,

your fingernails, the hoarseness of your voice.

I want us to be louder than the radio.