blue-berry pancakes

Watching Young Couples with an Old Girlfriend On Sunday Morning

-August Kleinzahler

How mild these young men seem to me now

with their baggy shorts and clouds of musk, as if younger brothers of the

women they escort in tight black leather, bangs and tattoos, cute little

toughies, so Louise Brooks annealed

in MTV, headed off for huevos rancheros

and the Sunday Times at some chic, crowded dive.

I don't recall it at all this way, do you ?

How sweetly complected and confident they look, their faces

unclouded by the rages

and abandoned, tearful couplings of the night before, the drunkenness, beast savor and

remorse. Or do I recoil from their youthfulness and health ? Oh, not recoil, just fail to see ourselves. And yet, this tenderness between us that remains
was mortared first with something dark, something feral, we still refuse,

we still refuse to name.