Two Poems

hot bosses

Except for a sadistic thing

about cops, I've never gone for

lines of authority. When you called

all those extra meetings about logistics

I clutched paper cups of coffee

until my palms burned.

I resented you, a little,

for the inefficiency of always

inviting the driver. I keep

reminding myself: You came to me

because I'm a man with a certain

reputation. Then you look at me

and I feel fast as capital.

Someone tried to break your face once

and you wear the scars like a dancer's costume,

parallel to the point. I keep imagining after,

when we're improbably alone, you'll kiss me shyly

next to stacks and stacks of fresh bills

on a bed. (What bed?) Don't get bogged down

in the details of the arrangement

or your history with knives and really,

we're contemporaries. When the thrill fades

to a hum, you'll need someone to remind you

when we were incandescent with greed.

The steering wheel is getting warm

under my hands (the heat of your shoulders

through a leather jacket). I'm watching the pocket of air

around the corner so intently I might

be shaking. You should appear. I hate this but

it's probably my favourite part—

anything could begin to happen.

The Big Dipper Wants Me (Lord, I Can't Go Back There)

The boat is not called True Love Waits. Sometimes, from the shore

of the St. Lawrence Seaway: a twitter of lights like a stranger's

cool thick hand moving you aside in a crowd, and then gone.

I know I've been gone a long time too, but all that's a matter

of public record. And, I didn't name the boat.

As if Orion's hands never go down to his belt

when no one's looking. If we found each other again,

I'd tease your eyeballs out and roll them around in my mouth

until I knew they were innocent. Of course, I'll give them back.

But those new reporters with their tin-can tape recorders

will manage to get this all wrong: I'm not a frivolous criminal,

and I know how to trim a sail.