Patina: A Triptych

24-hour service, a woman.

Tonight, the sky is read

as woman. It is 3 AM. The sun has not

befriended the sky in hours. Regrettably,

a red stain (name it: blood, menstruation, the failure

of sperm to saturate egg, said again:

the failure of woman to invite man into her body, to penetrate

one solitary lonely fretful egg: yes,

blood) has summoned a woman from the heat

of a tongue she could sink her body in.

It is 3:00 in the morning.

The blood that swelters her stomach is not

(like) the sky swelling night.

Three teenagers, 24-hour service.

Teenagers sit on a sidewalk, clothed

in smoke and asphalt. It is too

early to ponder desperation,

the veins of place. Loneliness,

here, is a placemat

for boredom, a bloat of violence, not

(unlike) the moon pressuring the sky.

Their eyes, unnamed stars or

icepicks. It is three a.m.

A cigarette’s ash falls, unprovoked,

into the night’s sky. There

is no wind to lift

and float the ashes, no

brushstroke will transcend

cancer into the relentless

beauty of dust.

No. It is three a.m. The sky is red as

red. Three teenagers, dressed in silvers

and blacks, sneers and cigarette

ash, fold into a sidewalk.

24-hour service, woman prowled.

Teenagers, sticky as asphalt, salty

as smoke, follow her, dogs (im)pulsing

from heretic blood. They tread their tar,

leave it sticking, as evidence,

on boxes, metal shelves, a wrench.

She heads to hardware, selects a weapon.

She feels weathered, races from aisle to aisle,

forgets how she arrived in these betweens.

Has she provoked these teenagers

or they her? The difference

between daybreak and 3 AM

can kill her. She walks the outline

of her body through the aisles, grabs

white sheets, hanging name tags, a stopwatch.

The woman is a woman, and the boys,

boys. What will happen to her

in Greensburg will ruin her chances

of love, will violate her skin, paint her

body the swollen white lie of sky.