Robert Smith Month
The hair of men
raised itself up, black and barbed. Lips curled at one edge and bled Ruby Woo red and Roberts jaywalked like crows in the back streets in closed jackets. When we called their names, sheet lightning faces looked back over shoulders, eyes questing; looked away. Robert Smith Month had come too soon.
We all wanted to be the one
to understand — to get under the creaky leather jackets and into the creaky hearts inside to kiss better the open wound that was a mouth to warm the skin but they always looked away and walked on, devastating the streets casting bitter cabbage tree shadows.
There was no cure for winter
except spring. We lay awake at night, our hearts crouched like cold bulbs in the dirt. Robert Smith Month had only just begun and the birds wouldn’t sing.
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