Every morning my mother dug
in her purse for the green
and black arabesque
case, angled the rearview,
looking from her face
to Kanis Road and back, unsnapped,
uncapped, and with her palms
on the steering wheel, holding
the gold tube in her left hand,
rotated the blunt red,
screwing up bright into raw
air, lifted it, traced
the upper, an upside-down
cupid's bow, then the lower,
straight as its arrow,
then again, deeper this time,
dashing each corner, her mouth open now,
the meat of the palm of her hand on the wheel,
craning closer to glass,
then pressing her lips to each other,
taking a tissue out of a box
on the seat, folding it,
inserting it between her lips,
then dropping her love-letter
on the seat between us.
She lit a cigarette.
Cracked the window. Leaned back.
To escape her mouth,
her smeared comic kiss,
the wrinkled paint, the V
of her filtrum,
I squeezed against the passenger door
tilting out the window into the cold air,
holding my breath. Thin
finger of smoke snaking toward me.
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