a poem by roberto montes

What’s loose in the dirt gets to crawl around
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My body is a temple
to how I will not die.
I will wear a headdress
made of famous towers
I have not visited.
I will slowly understand
what you mean
by the beach.
I will not take off my shirt
until there is no choice.
The moment when
things are loveliest.
The moment when
you quietly ask me
to take off my shirt
and we laugh
because I never
wear a shirt
not even now.
I am always lying
in small, helpful ways
to maximize morale
of the planet
while it works its face
into peculiar expressions.
Expressions I know best
when I accidentally feel
beautiful soaking
my forearm in the kitchen sink.
Expressions I will mouth
every night in my sleep.
And people will gather
in delicate orbit
to ask
please be silent
and I will not respond
as they watch my body
drift above their continent,
a satellite
that forgets every morning
why it never touches down.

"What's loose in the dirt gets to crawl around" was originally published in Alice Blue Review and appears in I Don't Know Do You 

Roberto Montes is the author of I Don't Know Do You (Ampersand Books) and the chapbook "How to Be Sincere in Your Poetry" Workshop available in full on napuniversityonline.com His work has appeared or is forthcoming from Forklift, Ohio; Alice Blue Review; Gargoyle Magazine and elsewhere. He lives in Queens.