A Question Posed to Elvis Presley

Your hair was darker than his:

smoked coal with scents like barbecue and pepper and southern coffee

each strand a whisper

a slick cacophony of lullabies to your father

of having no father

of the sound that haunts your loins.

Your lips were fuller than his:

not by much, though.

Peach matte with erased edges

blending the songs of the minutes of your life

the hound

the jail

the ghetto.

Your skin never peeled in the sun, I bet--

weren’t you some sort of devil?

Someone else before the sequins melted into

pins and needles

and pricks of

sin?

He says he was a boy scout

bred with the need for knives and fiery twigs

and boots with no laces that slice him up

and burn him down and walk around with

charm

and grace

and kisses.

So many kisses. So many kisses.

I have never been in his apartment.

I don’t know what he eats for Sunday supper, or

what kind of jazz smokes its way through his fingertips as he runs them

across the side of my left cheek.

One of his eyes is green.

The other is blue.

I thought I might ask you,

thought you might know to spill:

which one will blink first?