He chooses David Bowie, Changes; says This is our
song, Babe.  He leans close, singing soft and breathy
in her ear.  She shrugs him away with a laugh,
thinks about the makeshift platform bed back at
his artists’ commune.  One of the guys who lives here
was Janis Joplin’s lover, he’d told her.
Reckless and thrilling, she knows, just like
this impetuous trip.  Just like

the time she popped herself, naked
from the waist up, out of her boyfriend’s sunroof
one clear, moon-glossed night and took a ride
around the back roads of her little home town,
letting the wind taste her skin.

Under the table, she lays her hand on his
inner thigh and slowly glides her way up, ending
with a light brush across his lap.  His sharp inhale,
his glance, are lightning strikes.  This white-hot
charging of her senses must be love.  He’s already
said it is.  He leads her through the crowded bar
to the door.  She strokes his back with her body, wants

nothing to do with the pain pouring out of the jukebox:
Billie Holiday, Good Morning, Heartache.