Under Backwards By Curtis Blazemore

Six days before my 13th birthday

I got my first kiss—

I was a cloud of pixie stick dust

and he was skateboard.

He’s even cooler now at 36

living from summer to summer

with his newest lover.

His is under-backwards happiness.

I drove them to Santa Monica

from Oklahoma—

I heard him say to her in Arizona

A thousand miles on one kiss.

Yesterday we talked on the phone

and he said giddily

they might make rent this month

or they might drink it up.

We didn’t say a word about how

I know he’s lost—

sadness is a kind of judgement

and we know better.

Last thing he said was, To find

your dolphin name, lick

your fingertips and rub a balloon.

Like I was still a pixie.

--

Curtis Blazemore has been on the planet far too long, publishing various works in between having bad luck and making people rethink their faith in humanity. No matter. He sees sentences in the exhaled smoke and scribbles furiously. He hopes someday to be able to afford a Greyhound bus ticket to Graceland.