The Bat

How it careened, encircled by pokeweed
and burdock, a shyer voice
uncrushed, wings making Vantablack halos over
the smallest port sips,
sensuous in August tar, gooey
in humidity, like nights doing mascara
in the rearview in college, clubbing in leotards
to Depeche Mode, arguing
through a pay phone’s filthy pinpricks.

Tonight, the neighbor’s cat visits,
shifted from scythe-pupiled huntress to c-
shaped kitten, summer licking
her fur as the oak squiggles its vermin home,
moon projecting intimacy
as in the therapy room, that incident with the glass
veering into confession, erotic as Sexton’s
crossed legs, her Beyond it expression.

The dead holly sat like omen
for months before some daisies came in
like a cavalier second wedding, the jolly bride
no longer fertile, niece fresh
from doing Ecstasy in the ladies’, an awesome
dancer turning nineteen amid
extraordinary renditions, black sites,
face torqued as the DJ entrances her further
until she’s blissed, brutal as a gargoyle.