Weakness (2/30)

Temper, temper, full of fright
In the bathroom’s shadowed light,
How could mortal’s hand or thigh
Stop the mouth in one more lie?

When it was all over, they said it was like nothing they had ever seen.

She came in shadow, first spotted from the corner of the mirror
out of reach in the frame
close enough to smell
attaching to the spine tightening over
the cord wrapping through sacrum
low enough to growl
high enough to hurt
low enough to be mistaken for hunger
high enough to know better

She never lit for very long,
stories weren’t her thing she liked the staccato burst
jazz piano but not
the meandering kind she had
no patience for men like Monk
she liked Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker played Be-Bop
she liked Ray Charles
Ray Charles liked heroines and heroin
in dichotomous doses she liked
the color red for all the wrong reasons she
wrote bloody on hallway floors

The sequins scattered from her dress that night
she left seamtress entrails trailing
behind as she left the party she didn’t
like parties she liked
war
and nihilism
she was every twenty-something anarchists’ wet nightmare
her uterus spread ejaculate like disease
staining dollar store mattresses she was cheap she wasn’t
a whore it was more that
she liked vodka more it liked her
she liked tequila more than
it loved her

The angel-headed hipsters ashed her body
weighing out the door
she wrote bloody on hallway floors
spread death as orgasm clung to
shoe bottoms sticky pink bubble yum
the kind for nickels at the corner store
it wasn’t that she was cheap it was more that
she liked girls more than
girls liked her
she liked tequila more than
boys loved her