OAKS PRINT

Nights like these where the road empties out
around ten, goes dead, leaves only distances.
Here to the stop sign, the telephone pole,
the streetlight pooling at the intersection.
Sometimes the drone of quiet machines
in the back-alley next to my house.
Feeling the spring air crawl through the matted-down
grass, crusty with trash melted out of the snow.
The moon takes its time with whatever it does,
disappears mostly. Tries not to draw
much attention to itself. The way
I return to the same place repeatedly,
working the insignificant details.
Naked in the dark room. Feeling around
for the sides of your breasts, the knob
of your shoulder, coiling back,
pumping your collarbone against me.
In my mind’s eye the trail of your vertebrae
descends forever. One socket holding
the next one in place. Fence line. Wavering
leaves on the stand-alone oak trees, shyly alive
in the night-wind. From the top of the hill
I see floodlights on the ball field below me,
looking like a party I just missed out on.
Something tremendous the crowd left abandoned
and wandered away from toward nothing particular,
hoping for some other miracle.

Kai was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, grew up in Northfield and Moorhead, Minnesota, moved to California for a while, returned to Minneapolis. Went abroad for a while. Spent a year dropping forks off the Magdalen Bridge. Spent the last few years traveling around, living here and there, doing this and that, hiking to high places, surviving himself as a cook. He likes to drink coffee and watch movies and rollerblade. He is currently working on an MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.