Rearview

(Interview With The Marlboro Man)

Rain and more rain. There’s no end to it.
Water wells up in the grass around your foot,

leaves a sucked-in squelch-print after you lift
your foot away. I’ve been riding around

in a woman’s purse for a week, staring out
from the back of a magazine she hasn’t

had time to read. She’s been trying to get
the young ones to go to sleep. First one cries,

then the other. They’re so close in age.
She thinks it’s because she held onto the baby

too long, letting it fall asleep in her arms,
that it got used to the rise and fall of

her breathing. But I know it’s because she’s
in love with someone else, a man she once

had a fling with. Her husband wakes her
in the night to attend to the oldest,

who’s crying Mommy, but in her dream
this lover is pushing his fingers inside her,

so it’s hard to get up. The shredding sound
of water peeling under tires as a car passes by.

The sweep of headlights on the ceiling,
bending as they hit the wall.

She used to be a smoker, but now
she pays no attention to me at all.