A joke

Three o’clock
bends the afternoon
into the one green
sword of grass
that spired up
from the sewage ditch
in Montgomery, Alabama,
where I, 5 and glassy-cheeked
stood bawling mucus
at the red zip-cut
on my blade-snatching finger.

Not really.
Three o’clock bends
this afternoon the way
your big, white breasts
squatted balloonlike
against my chest skin
the Thursday night we tried
to mold our friendship into love.

Or maybe
3 o’clock bends my neck
like my chiropractor’s penis
would if it could,
if I wanted it to,
if the wine the Jew Jesus
stirred at Canaan
had a recipe demanding that
the floor of each cask
sprout a tongue,
a secret dandelion
poised squarely at the center,
and only made wobbly
by a joke.