Go on the prowl for a poet who knows more words & abbreviates your breath. Let them know you're smitten. If they're dead, stalk them through the dewey decimals. When Hilda Doolittle asks, “Where does the body come in? What is the body?” answer her.
- Jillian Weise |
He'd have to climb four flights
either way, usually the back
fire escape, and so arrived
with an out-of-breath sputter,
leaned over the rail outside.
I could hear him compose himself
like a sheet of music rustling
on the piano, a tune well-suited
for cranky audiences, allegro,
coda, encore and I taught him
everything about letting.
Letting it come, letting it go,
letting it fold over and back
and forth and again. The door
opened to the kitchen, small
and papered by the newlyweds
who owned the townhouse
before me: he didn't want it
anymore, and she did, they argued
down to the last signature.
I owned a full set of silver spoons
and knives, copper-bottomed
pots and pans I bought
thinking it would make me want
to cook. I didn't realize then
that the snap, the zing
has to be there from the get-go.
It doesn't just appear, announce
itself one Sunday with butter
for a brulee and steamed milk.
So I didn't cook for him.
Maybe that's why we broke.
Though every time, and three
total, the split felt false
as fractured bone that some
intern re-sets with tongs.
He was always later than I expected,
twenty-seven-years-old
and had never liked a blow job.
What were all his women doing?
I was sad for them then,
thinking of the last brunette's head
below his belt, had she knelt,
had she not looked in his eyes?
The first time it was a procedure,
lying down flat, he looked at the ceiling.
I didn't break out any of the tricks,
the shocker, the bedroom rocker.
It was simple like coloring in
the lines, a little red here, some pink.
I recalled my first go-down
with a man who had a girlfriend
and kept pushing it at my mouth
like a fork, open, open, until I did
and he told me I was the best,
and he thought I had been around,
and I didn't correct him.
This one with his hands at his sides
looked terrified, his teeth clenched,
the collar of his button-down
cinched at the neck, he removed
nothing but his pants, and before
the glory glory he stopped
because of a condition, I can't remember
what he called it, a condition
whereby he needed candy bars,
he needed to play with the red ribbon
from my hair, he needed to be
a boy again, wearing his pants.
Of course, he got better.
He was very good by the end.
And I hope this poem finds
his new brunette: What you have,
I gave him that. Don't be sad.