Ablation

That summer we drank cans
of malted yeast farts
& made cracks about what
old farts our parents had turned out to be,
even though we’d done our best
to raise them well, &
I learned how to play guitar
in that Cat Stevens way
that sounds like all strings.
The three girls sat outside on a blanket
singing Lord won’t you buy me
a Mercedes Benz & I watched
their round cheeks & wide shoulders
turn pink then red then brown
in the sunlight.
I wore out my first pair of Birkenstocks
on the corner of Coffee & Main &
we made plans to go to Louisiana
& when those fell through, we made plans
to go to Europe & settled
on going to the movies, where we
always ate Twizzlers & drank Cherry Coke.
In Kentucky we laughed at
the old hippies in bead stores
& bought each other necklaces
made out of hemp and chatoyant
that were supposed to symbolize longevity, but
I was wearing flip-flops when I got paranoid
about skin cancer and insisted
that we stop & buy sunscreen.
I chose Hawaiian Tropic the way
I choose my peach shampoo—
sniffing every bottle &
I hid the ones that spilled over
their medicinal white goo,
putting them back behind the others,
hoping there were no
security cameras watching me.
We left the beach because of
the horseflies biting my ass &
on the way home we debated
trading my Civic for a
rusting ’68 Beetle we passed in sandy Columbia.
Back home I wrestled the Janis girls down
& smeared my sun block on their peeling noses.
I watched them as they rubbed the lotion
into each other’s backs,
gingerly lifting up the strings
of their tank tops & bras.
I almost took off my beads
& sat down with them
to lizard on the splotchy grass.
Those beautiful girls almost made me forget
my fear of solar monsters eating me &
gremlins strumming on my stringy veins,
waiting to bite into my juicy parts
the way we had devoured
our sno cones & hamburgers
and laughed off the winter
with syrup & relish
at the corners of our ripe lips.