Once the cloth was coarse to the fingers
but long years wore the denim
down till the fabric is soft as old parchment.
I love to hug him in that jacket,
and with our country at arms, to repaint
the banner chipped enamel of his fingernails.
But everyone says the zip fastens the wrong way,

that men’s nails must be blank.
By the flame of the lighter I see his eyes
are they wrong too?
Is this glossy, cellophane picture-led media right
that there is but one way to be whole?

He blows out, makes sparks catch his sorrows
like a spider will a fly.
In the orange butt I see his vitreous shimmer
with water and fragility. The stratitions
on his pupil’s like a spider’s yarn,
his expression the smithereens of creation.

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