Some girl said,

“you really like your bike,

don’t you?”

Well, I suppose I do.

Sometimes I wish I were a biketaur,

a man with a bicycle instead of

legs.

I would be so fast.

Stairs would be a challenge, but

I wouldn’t have to lock me up

to keep myself from being stolen

because I would always be with me.

I wish

I could just take off.

I want to ride and ride,

down to the end of the well-treed street,

out of the outskirts of town

where the house paint peels

and the dirt is seeded with candy bar wrappers,

so far and so long that I

would forget time is passing,

somewhere on a Northwest road,

rolling empty through tall fading grasses

and intermittent groves.

I wouldn’t even need legs —

red muscles straight on the gears,

a form made for gliding.

I can’t decide

if I want it to always be mid-afternoon

or if it’s okay for the sun to set.

I wonder,

as a biketaur,

if my torso would just meld into the frame,

if I wouldn’t have a pelvis,

in which case it would be easier

not to think about you.

On the other hand, maybe

the ladies would be intrigued

by my mechanatomical quirks.

I would be the life of parties,

and they would wonder about me

like when men wonder,

“how do mermaids have sex?”

But either way,

I would never have to ask for a ride.

When I get to the end of the well-treed street,

I turn around and go home.

I lift my waist off my bike

and U the lock

around its beaten frame,

chipped and glossy blue.