Two Poems

In the Waiting Room

Draw open your belly, let me see what’s inside: red tube emissions, baby cheeks, and lesions; a pair of nipples like broken padlocks rasp at the gown’s pulsometer—streaked hospital glass, nerves of the waiting room crayon the distracting fluid half naked children can sip, floating voices wriggle—lost ships keeling. The news is that the news is these are real pearls, not the kind you shove up your ass. The light begs surgical steel passing behind my eyes & metalloid sounds of scraping feet and squeaking gurneys, sorry I showed up already forgetting— made it as soon as I could drunk. Geriatrics (for Kids 6+) He was old and his cheeks were bags of change, snow retreating wherever he went brown halos on coffee tables followed. Grunting and creaking he moved, a carcass of rusted metal dragging me to bazaars with no curfew. Told me sit up straight and bump hard into the man so he doesn’t feel your hand in his back pocket— swindling money by hustling pool, when I was your size   a cigarette stuck to his bottom lip wagging a punishing finger at me & toppling to the ground, it’s in his liver—flooding. Picayune televisions yammering in every room of sex in public—what would he look like naked? What’ll I look like when I’m that wrinkled? The slow hand’s perpetually accelerating—chasing you down he said in the end you only know 2 kinds: alive and dead & I never plan on joining the latter.

return to SHAMPOO 32