(1957)
There was a trick to it
I mostly learned before
the razored metal bands
came off and I could drive.
A girl named Adrienne
proposed, if she and I
each cocked our heads just so
(neck cricks or creaks not in
the picture then), steel points
where wires attached like small
transmission lines could cross
at peace, while tongues explored
a moist beyond without
rasped tangles or the punctures
that an early Orthodontic Age
was sentenced to. Whispered
by streetlight on the top stoop
of her West End house, that
was a revelation whose
unfolding twists proved brief
for innocence
like her last name
has vanished in time’s crease.
