KHASHAYAR MOHAMMADI
Pillow’s Kiss
(excerpted from Moe’s Skin)
Pillow’s kiss past midnight’s stroke and doze down the fugue
of highway tunes. Up, up and away — past mall-lit windows we
migrate between, bootleg DVDs and cider house blues where
hatred blossoms in plastic-bagged opacity, past the hooka-smoking
girls lustfully eyeing lustful men in blue.
Feel like a god, but slip on Moe’s Skin.
A new motto for massage chair afternoons:
“Don’t frown! You’ll slip.”
A single leaf behind an iPod case;
a Djinn in each passing eccentricity.
I fly where the water poured.
From up here all is bright — neon dots
splashed against god-stricken shacks,
shackled. Fluttering glitter, dashing
along the five-lane Serengeti. Highway
windows hold Mystery Men of Blue, half-
knit to cascading lace curtains, puffing away
exhausted cigarette smoke. Purring cars
bow to laundromats, an exhibition of
teenage mothers freckled with nocturnal
blues. Yanking shirts and slamming doors:
another bed left unshared.
I fly back to trace
our blasphemous steps.
My back to the blinding sun,
I smile a masculine smile
and bludgeoned by my adaptive nature
you spin.
Ticker taped by rain we stride,
counting down to the promised flood:
two boys dipped in the absurd;
two mystery men in blue.
Pillow’s Kiss
appears in CAROUSEL 42 — buy it here
