Lefty’s tender side

 
Hey Lefty
Lefty’s eyes went queasy
then wet as good pussy
This is Mom
said the voice on the phone
Tears sprang from Lefty’s face
Tarantino leer quavered
He excused himself from the podcast.
The blow-up doll
in the tree
shuddered and sagged
in the wind.
The girls underwear lay stain-up
in the tumbleweed.
My beer was hot.
A cloud of gnats passed
through the microphone.
A scorpion scuttled under a rock.
Smoke from Lefty’s brush fire
blinded my eyes.
There was weeping inside
a shattering of lamps.
Sparks crowded my sight like the gnosis
you covet at twelve.
I forgot Lefty’s phone number
two days on the beach
He was not in Colivri
Luigi was missing
Lefty’s fake girlfriend
not Evangelina, way before that
had gone back to Europe
and I felt the surgeon
as plucks on the heartstrings
fiddling in my tripe
reaching from my head
down to the reefeating surf.
I choked back a tear
when I saw Lefty
staggering back up the garden.