The Lovely Boxers of Claremont Road

by Ian Davisson

Hollywood Boulevard hook me up to your feeding tube I am ready
to smell the perspiration disappearing into cigarette smoke.
I am in love with a girl who wears overalls and no undershirt and cowboy
boots with steel tips like crying copperhead eyes.
In Vine City we watched two boys kill each other—their hands crossed
and their knees in each other's crotches.
Eating nuts in a bag from a Chinese man who watches pedestrian angst
like those Nazi propaganda videos.
Could have let me hold your hand but you handed me the matches and
you held your cigarette and you begged fire from the heavens.
All Cabbagetown millionaires with their garbage overflowing the streets while garbage
men are on strike neighboring your worst enemy.
I bit the head off a magnum bar and the cold metal of the sidearm on your thigh
dug straight into my thigh spreading my legs wide.
Mechanicsville pig'n'chik cops swirling ice cream with their noses
full of whiskey stinking mustache hair.
Wiping sugar off the seat tearing down all the trees watching houses pass on the
      interstate
while seduction-savvy sets in.
We ride dirt roads with the windows down velour smelling pleather seats
stuck to your ass and pulling you down.
I am a white boy with a big flabby face I say looking at myself
in the mirror turning right then left then right.