you and spinach
belong together in a sentence
you’re a health nut
in a low key kind of way
and have something in common
with absorbent leaves
softly rumpled in a plastic bag

you are learning about freaked-out moms
and how to make babies without cock
without sperm?
to get pregnant by peppercorns
papery pink globes and hard seeds
gently cupped

in here Ida Cox cracks peppery
and the velocity of the Gold Line
smudges into insect frequencies

and I could be riding it out
beyond the suburban forsythia
to the tip of the pine needle
that almost-wounds you

so I’m practicing obedience
to this silver-skinned plastic hunk
for tapping chatter into

while youth and its zillions of possibilities
dribble out of me, urinous
and I get so helpless and horny and bored and disobedient
I have to fiddle with myself or the window
right in the middle of the poem

big orange fireball
knifing its heat all over me
as if I were its cake

until finally I’m cooled off
no more gabbing on and on
but still enough to let you
come to me