Her Happenstance

 

In coarse shimmer paradox
she gift-wraps her crescendo
argument, peppered as it is
with golden flakes of charm and intellect,
her happenstance,
she badgers me until I am
tilted, with alarms blaring spinning in
red petticoat and court jester aftershave,
her spittle a luminous thread across the bridge
of my french nose like the money shots
openly hiding in my browser,

mother gestures a holy pattern her
long skeleton fingers hovering over a
bleached breastbone, the mole of a thousand
generations, stolen pearls her grandmere
lifted in a New York braggart,
her heart yet to give up on a brute
alcoholic menace that gave up on her,
fellatio and affairs in the dark corners of
eight-ball tournaments smelling like smoke
and trophy polish,

don't go near her, she warns,
and the waitress brings the check,

later I am drawn into the trap on my
knees in the wet limp lit afterglow behind
Linda's Lady, a wet garbage smell, rancid
urine aftertaste, overgrown splash of
wild weed in the concrete
exchanging grey grit
for a taste of my blood,

I oblige,
I bleed on,
she kisses me cloaked in the silver drapes
of countless midnight American Spirits,
she does not waste time on dramatic overture
or useless diatribe, she is
vapid,
and angry,
she pulls the trigger and I am sent remembering
my mother's words into something else
entirely,
into abyss,
and sleep.

TA