Call our names the
black and white nudes sent
to the patron saint of hermits,
mutes, and Freudian
slips. Saint Droggo prays
for coffee house owners
and, all the same, the insane,
our fathers, but more importantly,
calls us the shepherds of smoking
at the gas pump and embracing
like the lovers beneath Berlin’s death
strip (c. November, 1981).
Call it lust for the shape of a shoe
stuck in the mud by people who
“like to get the ball rolling.”
Call it religion before we fall
asleep mumbling the litany of
couples flown to the desert
after twenty-eight years apart
and (wholesomely) holding hands
strolling down the strip.
Call them neither merchandise,
nor the elevator, and instead
the Queens of California
copulating with the Kings
of Mullets (the perfect haircut for
men with receding hairlines).
Call my father and lie about
where we are. Tell him you
called the cops after
I said he was the neon green
Nokia sign in the left field
where the Atlanta Braves played.
Call that stadium a place,
or a word to represent one.
and if that’s so, call this a
filling station and
call it a virgin country,
and I’ll name you sovereign
once you call it heaven
or Las Vegas.
