Monday, August 03, 2009

Seven Things

Seven Things I Should Have Said, Before You Left.

I preferred your sandwich with the crust untrimmed,
Your sighs were iridescent oil on asphalt,
Domination always twitching on the fringes.
The secret? The alphabet trick with my tongue.

Your voice steeped fragrant as loose leaf Darjeeling,
brown bits of cinnamon stick on my tympani,
most nights I dug its squall of sudden spice.
And any bag, even silk, was too much restraint.

Given time, the bend of The Butterfly Position
(insistence banging the bottom of the bundle)
gears shifting like a manic derailleur
probably could have cured your scoliosis.

I never liked your girlfriend with the organic perfume,
that protracted eyebrow, a geometric sneer,
knew she was orange juice on a sore throat,
afterbirth on ice, dripping all night.

I came home early that weekend from Chicago,
saw her feral hands clasp your jagged gasps.
The camcorder wasn't the only thing turned on.
I fapped to the tape at least once a week.

I never enjoyed the sound of slapping you.
But what else would we have done for rhythm?
After nights of Neapolitan, vanilla is a prison,
even if French, with flecks of exotic beans.

When you angled the just oiled pistol
and proclaimed "Either we say 'I do',
or I shall have to kill myself."
I thought, "Well, I'm going to miss you."

I do.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

damn that was tight...i pray that this wasn't a true story though...or maybe not literal...reminded me of Ai's poetry

made me curious and uncomfortable, but i couldn't stop reading

-daki

Joel Dias-Porter said...

It's a true story, but I rolled three different women into one. Most of it is two women I dated years ago, one of whom liked sex a little rougher than I was comfortable with. No people were harmed in the making of this poem.