backroads and country you pull me up cowboy 

tip my hat and dance with me over a bottle of beer

i’ve never been one for whisky 

but your crackle / pot stained lips 

touch mine in all the right pockets of skin and gum

and i think it reminds me of religion

we tread on horse to the courthouse knit stitching

on the worn down edges of our mismatched boots

and a gun slung in your left pocket

you say your vows with a blade of grass tucked

into your smile and i don’t know / how

i ever went without seeing the shadows of bugs

trace the edge of your jaw trace the meat of your thigh

touching the peeling corners of the scars

beneath my button down

burying my the ridges of my knuckles like mountaintops

in the soft flush of your cheek

sunsets and mudwater / crickets and dewberry

we lie in the backseat of your truck 

leather burning our backs leaving stinging red hues

achy sweet bruising in the crook between

our elbows where only you the sun / can reach

but the lord didn’t make our veins run for no reason

we let cotton tickle our overdid belt buckles 

your legs sandwiched between my hiked up jeans

in the half-light of the powerline sunset

you tap your cigarette against a gas pump

and blow second-hand smoke into my mouth

taking care to rid us of the ashes against the concrete

and we know that we’re not going quietly but with a squelch 

of highway gravel and bar stools groans with our initials

carved into the underside of the oak wood

kiss me, cowboy tuck your hand in my back pocket 

and thumb my lighter like a torch of the new morn