I place
two fingers between my lips-
the vertical set-
to gather perfume.
Like a brothel woman,
I sniff the scent:
juniper and vinegar rice,
the healthy smell
of a woman in love with herself.
I dab
effortless nectar behind each ear
(all day
attracting smiling eyes
from men and women
in love
with the physical feminine)
and save the second finger
for my tongue,
to taste what my lover does,
and to drink
the gift of my womanhood.
Papa drank one scotch a night. Brown liquor on ice cut three fourths with water in a crystal bell cup. A murky lake. Me on his knee, him sneaking me sips at three, five, seven. He ate dinner at nine, after all of us: Mama had done the dishes, her face a crumpled wet rag; Fratello found the lock on his bedroom door and played no music, maybe Nintendo. Papa fed me mushrooms from the Chicken Marsala. Wine and scotch sugar tongue. At eleven I wanted water. I sucked the scotch from the ice cubes, left the liquid. Was I drunk? I never made it to the kitchen for a drink, halted in the hallway between bedroom and living room by the voice of a preacher on TV. “There is a cure.” Mama asked Papa, “Are you still attracted to women?” I slid down the wall and went thirsty.
Tomorrow I fly to NY where the street numbers are upwards of “Route 2.” I slipped into a whole in the space/time continuum: Plainfield, Vermont. Debbie said, “We are not in a bubble.” She saw a pick up packed with men throwing bottles and phrases from the car window, tires flicking gravel against wood dorms. “But not at me.” I said, “Just in general.” She nodded but said no to the passed joint, so Steve and I smoked it ourselves, and then three more on the porch of the dorm with the underwater mural where the octopus has nine arms. Google-eyed and red with one extra tentacle. John said, “It’s his tail.” I took a picture of the painting. And fires just logs without flames, the smoke silhouette a bustled apparition. And the building where the Lorax lives, up three stories to a door skinny like the trunks of surrounding trees. And hanging flowers, petals pink string, called Bleeding Hearts.
