The Back Door.

We'll leave the back door swung open when
we leave. Drop acorns from our
skirt pockets like buoys in the grass-- landed
between the fireflies floating on their backs
each blowing out the candles 
in their bellies. We bring backpacks
and blankets and a thick metal flashlight
to we pretend we finally stole the moon. 
We walk out up the street like it had a place to 
take us. Like we could end up
anywhere but under a street lamp in Paris
reading each other's poetry to the Seine
only to throw the verse word by word
into the water until all that was left
was our ears. My wives know poetry.
I would ask if any of us knew enough
French to find Picasso or a crème brûlée
ponds to rest our espresso spoons in--
unbuckle our pants and unhindge kissing mouths
of bra-wires in the cream-- we are
smooth dusk that doesn't take our pens.
Together ice each square of the sidewalk
like a gingerbread house-- wipe sugar from
our shoes as we go-- use coffee mugs to 
scoop away the eaten trying to eat
the alleys from out between buildings--
we built this street suspended in the cat's cradle
of phone wires we use to make love--
Not bra-wire love, not Picasso poet love,
We hold up love like picking back up poem words
thrown into the Seine-- spooning feed
each other crème brûlée-- 
cat calling from the sidewalk:
 fat and loud
and short and bird-boned and slut
and whore and prude 
and vixen and harlot and
sex-puppet and floozy and quiet 
and shy and anorexic and emotional
and dyke and faggot 
and everything Picasso found 
to describe a woman body-- 
heard all the way from the the back door
we left wide open.
Our house knows knows our poems--
it waits with
lazy lamp eyes-- awake to make sure we come home.
It knows our wrists and forearms. It knows 
the walls we sink into like shadows 
of women-bodies behind wallpaper.
When I was eleven I was a member 
of Sargent Pepper's Lonely Heart's club band. 
My father cut my hair and taught me
how to use hair gel.
I wore two different colored shoes. 
I wasn't cold in the winter.
I still cut my hair short like Picasso.
I use hair gel. But when boys call me
a dyke I laugh only because they think
it's an insult.
We are the happy sluts.
We are the people who stole the moon--
our back door isn't left open for
you to enter but so that you know
where you never belong--
They should have known I'd have wives.
I'm cold in the winter.
We have blankets. I'd rather
the back door left open.