A Slender Volume of Poetry by Rebecca Gray
by Rebecca Gray
published by Xynobooks, LLC at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Rebecca Gray
Discover other titles by Xynobooks at Smashwords.com
A SLENDER VOLUME OF POETRY BY REBECCA GRAY
I. A RESPONSE TO NOT QUITE ESCAPING ROBERT
II. RAYMOND I’VE BEEN BATHING IN MY OWN PISS
LISA ASKS WHY I WEAR RIPPED DRESSES
I’M NO FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, BUT
A WORD ON WHY I’LL TAKE A DRUNK EVER TIME
Dear You, I’ll stop when you do.
Love, Your Future Mom
Ben W. waves at me from far away in the snow.
Hi. Halloooo.
His tiny flannel arm wiperblades ridiculous half circles over his head.
Up close, it’s packed in, like work and hard.
He bends down,
I lose him in the snow.
He stoops, bent, pulling something.
It is impossible to tell what a body is doing, so far away.
Hollow boom. The soft, fat, falling sound of distance.
I wave, slower and slower. He doesn’t look up again.
Busy.
He was alone when he left me.
I. A RESPONSE TO NOT QUITE ESCAPING ROBERT
They’re out there in large numbers
In droves.
And sometimes one of them personally might manage to elude the name
but it leaves its mark on the rest of us, just the same.
Robbie, Rob, Bob, Bobby
Even going by a middle name,
James, Barry, Cliff.
Robert.
Bobs are the least dangerous of all of you, Robert
They are only the cotton-candy-sticky baby pinkie finger
on the imprint of somebody much more like a prick.
Isn’t he self-effacing and good-natured,
Bob
His smile makes everything all right again and sells the car
He gets in touch with his estranged eighteen-year-old son,
too late for child support but maybe not for Hey, Sorry
His penis is attached upsidedown
I don’t like the way you think.
I don’t like the way you think.
I can’t get my mind around it.
I can’t make it my own.
It makes me want to kill you.
It makes me want to consume you and see what comes out the other end.
So much more understandable.
Robert, you get away from me
And you come back.
I could have you but the price is too steep.
I can let you make yourself fit into my lap,
but I’ll find the places on my leg the next morning where your claws dug in
You never get off without a mark.
II. RAYMOND I’VE BEEN BATHING IN MY OWN PISS
What you thinkin in there, in your own tub full?
Is she a blonde in that tub, with big tits,
like me?
A dead girl?
I bet she is, with red lipstick
on.
Revlon red, a fifties shade, outta slinky metal tube
One that’s supposed to look fine
In an evening bag.
Did she shimmy into your office
With a skirt tight at the knees?
Did you appraise her legs from under the brim of your hat?
Did you have a whiskey?
I’ll read you later and hate you,
I’ll read you later and hate you
never putting me in your books.
[I don’t like the way you think.
I don’t like the way you think.
I can’t get my mind around it.
I can’t make it my own.
It makes me want to] do you in.
You have your own code of honor and I can’t crack it.
You want me to play but I don’t know the game.
I’ve forgotten it, a scant twenty years later.
I got something out of you today before I gave anything up, and I played pretend like I haven’t since we were little. Because I’ve been afraid to like it all this time. I’ve been on my back in this neighborhood you’ve only driven by. That’s home and easy, like the water just a little yellow, but everything to you. Maybe that’s why I gave up the game and the only time you’ll play it. Have I lost something now because I’ll do this for real, when I should have been pretending?
[what comes out the other end, so much more understandable]
Drink. Eat. Don’t even think about what you put in there or where it came from. Talk to me like you can mete out justice. Talk to me like justice is autonomous of what you make it. Take no account of your daily murders. Don’t look at the big picture and how you fit in. Drive your streets, clean your weapon, name your poison, drink it.
I’m lyin in my own piss in the tub, Raymond
Put that in yr book
III. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NICK
We’re all hoods, *wink*
even when we ain’t
crime fiction
THAT brutal cunt,
Not gracefully.
It’s never a gentle reminder with her,
no
it’s an ASS-KICKING,
a fucking Whallop
unnecessary
these bruises will attest to.
It’s always, WHAM.
GET DOWN
& stay down
maybe that’s what’s shook my memory lose
I can’t seem to remember these arguments long enough