Nights in Lascaux

Of the Master, not much is said anymore. The caves empty,
the petroglyphs of aurochs were pickled plumb. We heard rumors
of limestone sex, the French boys silly in the curbs of their elbows
and thighs.  The disciples were gone by the end of summer, their kenosis
like the walls of ice cream cones gone soft from flirtations. The jackal-filled
midnights dissolved into roars from Harleys—a Panhead chopped down
and alpine-idled like Adams’ dynamo. We waited all this time without
knowing we were waiting, and whatever passages the known grifted
from the unknown faltered in the morning’s leavings until the women we left,
oh so long ago, stopped dreaming our names.
 

Adam Vines and Allen Jih have authored one collaborative collection, According to Discretion (Unicorn Press, 2015). Their collaborative poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Drunken Boat, Baltimore Review, Redivider, Bluestem, and The Journal, among others. Allen is an aerialist specializing in straps in Las Vegas. He is on contract with Cirque du Soliel’s Beatles Love at The Mirage. Adam is an assistant professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he is editor of Birmingham Poetry Review and director of the English honors program. He is the author of The Coal Life (University of Arkansas Press, 2012). His recent poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Southwest Review, Subtropics, and The Hopkins Review.