Website Updates and Another Poem

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Tonight’s poem, which I read at Eve’s Night Out. A work in progress, but still copyrighted. J

A Drug Dealer Hits on a Poet Outside the Super 8

He propositions her with a one-dollar bill,
smiles through gold rimmed teeth, faux diamond studs
lining each lobe like a school of fish eyes.
“I like girls like you,” he says
thinking surely she will be his catch.

But all she can do
is suck smoke through the gills of her Camel light
unhook the dollar from her fingertips
shoving it at him like yesterday’s news
and try to fend off that PTSD
drowning the night
the others took her without asking
her egg hijacked by the millions swimming
in a pool of blood that would become her baby.

“Funny that you think I’m your type,”
she wanted to say, “See, cuz I like girls,
and I’m not for sale,
and you can take your…”

Or, “Funny how you’re so weak
you have to tread water by night
on the streets of Hotlanta
where soon the city will
pirate you for all you’ve got,
your spirit washed up and wasted
on the shores of some distant demon’s beach
his waves washing over you now
pummeling your molting face into the grit,
sand choking the air from your throat,
plugging you up like you thought you
could do to me.”

She wanted to say,

“I know what was given me,
the way a woman’s breasts
float in bathwater
or how the orchid imitates.
I know the way breath moves between lovers
like moonlight across a pasture
its wild blue light infecting every blade of grass,
every hair, every outlying hope.”

“I know,” she wanted to say,

“and I want to shake you
until we are the same, your fists
parading down like raindrops
each speck a light kiss on my face,
until we are drowning in the muck of it all
the city the stench the beauty the grace
your proposition
like water off a duck’s back
our pain the same
like a beacon across the darkened city sea.”

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