Your armpit is a red squirrel
torn
open on the road.
Your forearms are as cars
left
at the curb, mid-summer:
covered in aphid shit.
Which is to say you’re
mottled. But your shoulder
is a high-beam. A bare gleam.
Your ass is two feral cats
in the auto bin.
* * *
Your eyes the lit tip
of a cigarette
coming towards me
in the dark.
* * *
Yes, your armpit is a dead
squirrel.
And your ass is two gasoline
pigeons
squabbling in the eaves. Two
ginger cats
in the auto bin.
* * *
Your face
the sidewalk puddle
I shuffle through.
Your eyes
my last cigarette.
* * *
Your love for me is a raccoon
living under the porch &
licking its lips
on garbage day.
No, wait! Your love is a
brown vole
drowned in a pool
in a better neighbourhood.
* * *
Your pursed lips
a thunderstorm
I try to sleep through.
* * *
Your love for me is a raccoon
knocking over garbage cans
& growling.
But without you, the
streetlights won’t
come on. I sputter, hiccup.
A car rattling down the alley
& never coming home.
2 comments:
This is great. A nasty, urban love poem.
On first read I wasn't sure about repeating the dead squirrel image, but on subsequent reads it works for me. I wonder if it how it's laid out. On the front page of the blog it looks one way, but here in the comments it looks different.
I'd like a more dynamic (angry?) word than 'shuffle'.
I go back and forth on the "No, wait!" I'm not sure what my problem is with it, but it niggles me.
Sort of like an inversion of the song of songs. Very hip.
I esp. am taken with the cigarette lines. Don't know what gasoline pigeons are but it makes perfect sense somehow.
I think I agree with replacing shuffle, it sounds too...happy or neutral.
No wait! sort of lends itself to the character of this...but "I sputter, hiccup" distracted me every time, in the final stanza, perhaps b/c it is the only self-directed comment, and distracts from the strength of "the streetlights won't come on"/"A car rattling down the alley & never coming home." Even if you removed teh word "I" there, it would work better for me.
Very funky & punky, AG.
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