Pike

// Danielle McMahon

You got your
Hatchback // Stickshift
// Bring it home for Christmas

Red is the color of the hatch-back
streaking Pike, when we go screaming,
shrugging the jersey barrier

My ears blush, brick-hot
Your ears blush, brick-hot

                     (It’s like that
                     when you kill the engine)

Stung by the slaking
of an oh-so-sweet innocence
A whiptail, strawberried, blonde

                      (& mine)

a shy white linen, habitually drawn to
in-cin-eration

                      (& cables of light
                      catch your waterless eye)

Your shoulders ripe as that
shrugged jersey, itself
unstitched, apple-green-bitten

                      (& there’s your face again
                      on the ridges
                      of my wandering eye)

Snaking the wild way, this tedious thing
My hackles peak for this
free-falling