2007 - Vol. 4, Issue 5

Away from the blazing sun highway,
I follow my uncle,
whose mechanical skill

I have never mastered:
the saw cuts crooked,
the screwdriver slips.

I feel a part of the world is shut to me.

My uncle years on years ago
fiddled and found the keys to machines;
now here we walk and talk
in tall tree territory.

My uncle opens his reality.

Separation from his wife;
a needy roommate;
a psychoanalyst
impassive, except about cunnilingus.

"What is cunnilingus?"
I ask my uncle, whose eyes
slide toward mine: "Never mind,
young fellatio — right?"

I let my uncle joke about my tendency.

Away into a narrow dirt path, we ascend
to the fire–tower and its little steps
that inspire vertigo halfway up
but, like Bunyan's Everyman,

I am rewarded

by green breasts of mountains —
unoriginal thought, young fellatio!
I chided myself.
What else undulates?

"You can't see much,"
my uncle declared.
"Everything's covered by fog.
So much for adventure."

A sculptor, a sculptor,
I was straining to recall,
who formed curves except,
oddly, not for female breasts.

Ah, yes,
Michelangelo mountains!