Bikes 3

Susan Brennan

on a purple sparkle banana bike seat

on the dead end of Rosebud Lane

Kathy points the blackest tip of liner

at each of her eyeballs like how we were taught

to line colors in pictures to make shapes

more definite.  Silhouetted by an orangey pink sunset

someone dumped a tequila sunrise on a wall

and it's falling slowly.  Street lights pop on

like periscopes and cicadas crank out their mating racket, imagoes, a word we were taught

and instantly forgot, their constant crawl and shiver across miles of waxy

oak leaves and we roll back and forth on our bikes under a thin slice of moon

that will guide our steps later that night in the brush looking for a beer party

all night we will apply and reapply strawberry Bonnie Bell lip gloss as it catches flashlight,

fire light, cigarette lighter light and fastens a mixed tape of glow to each smirk and kiss

our legs are freckled and mosquito bit and behind us, in a dark field doomed someday to be

a neighborhood, the strong smell of blackberry rises and tangles the summer dusk

through the handlebars, the lavender vanishing point of Rosebud Lane succumbs

and we head into the acres of blackberry thatch that shadows itself Gordian

we negotiate with machete, stain fingertips, forearms, thighs

bruised purple of the coming on night