II. Maytree & I take our first veterinary exam

Post-Anatomy came
        celebratory Sweet Water where
his bottom lip’s a snapshot
        the shade of rhomboids on
an embalmed cat’s corpse that we
        studied for weeks

            & his voice
licked a blackberry bush that stung like
        Doveak’s prophecy that Negro melodies
would be the basis for American music—
        but he could never have foreseen
our jazz on gold sheets like Ellington

       translated into something you could wrap
in fingers from his huge palms, those
       stilled metronomes gone post-sex sedentary,

sat braided with mine on his sternum while
       my bottom lip brushed his left nipple:
nerve center of my enterprise.