Photos of you from the 80s: your permed

mullet, day-glo spandex, braces. You mused

 

about your lovers: the first girl who squirmed

under your tongue, the first boy who abused

 

your bum. We wouldn’t have been friends back then.

You liked dudes, ripped and mean. I was neither.

 

What was the term? “Art fag”? Still, tonight, sin,

a slick mess, has brought us to this. Cancer

 

has not dimmed your ardor. Your husband snores

upstairs. Your younger self stares down on us.

 

I have to wonder if she’d be surprised

to find you spread wide? skewered? on all-fours

 

like beasts? Slow, deep feast — coitus carnalis

— cum now, I think that she’d be scandalized.