"She is Kissable Violet-Pink" by Christopher Fox Graham

She is kissable violet-pink
all radiant silver laugh lines
beneath upscale eyes offering underbrewed coffee
to a highway rat fresh off the road
nickel smiles traded for news stories and directions

she is a next-morning destination
an I’ll-be-back-again
a when-do-you-get-off?-too-forward-too-brash bitten tongue
till it bleeds crimson lotus blossoms

her thank-you handshake turns heart to whipped mint

if home was not five hours across the ripe peach Arizona desert
I would ask to make her my morning
until liver turned mild evergreen in decades hence
and ate me alive from the inside
her hips, my early morning sun
even under cloudy skies

I could swallow her until arching back scrapes the heavens
until she swears the sun
has changed to Niagara reef jade
until she forgot the language of ancestors
and this modern tongue
due to mine
swallowed the stars
and spoke something celestial
best translated as
“applause please”

"Near Telluride" by Christopher Fox Graham

Near Telluride
where blue edge sky
cut razor across the lucky clover forest
is the balcony sunset of the gods
whatever names you want to call them
my soft wine soul is too heavy with sins and sulfides
to ever reach their heavens
but if there is one
if must look something like this
when glittering sun
turns the morning lakes into skylight views
long ago they traded nectar for sweet tea
sit on Olympian porches with hound dogs
and talk about the good old days of Troy
the well-bred brown earth draws them here like a magnet
until sunset turns skies raspberry pink
and the begin to Alzheimer’s themselves into oblivion
and we forever lose their names to the mist

"Cross the velvet rope" by Christopher Fox Graham

Cross the velvet rope
and enter the bright black raspberry night
there’s not a cloud in sight
to interrupt views of statuesque night
golden cactus flowers send candy drop letters
to the green sprouts in the east
growing beneath the etched glass glow of cities
turned antique olive by the grime
when we extinct ourselves the sun will glow
bright again beneath our carcasses
and meadow flower yellow will rise
as skyscrapers fall